


Only Opens from the Inside

by innie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 01:16:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Breaking Dean's deal has consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Opens from the Inside

**Author's Note:**

> Made AU by 3x16.

Sam doesn't exactly wake up, but he does slowly regain focus, and just a couple of minutes before Dean slides back into consciousness for the first time in three days. Sam had planned it all precisely, but he hadn't counted on Dean's continuing protests or on having to silence Dean and subdue him, and there'd been a lingering, horrifying doubt somewhere in the back of his mind that Dean was playing possum, laying low until the moment Sam's attention was caught by something else, and head off to the crossroads to honor his deal. But Dean apparently really hadn't been expecting Sam to do more than say a few pretty words, and he'd gone down, obligingly, like a ton of bricks when Sam hit him with everything he could muster. 

Dean's eyes flutter open slowly, and after one look at the panorama of the desert landscape and a quick check of the time and date on his cell phone, Dean fixes his gaze on a spot somewhere in the vicinity of Sam's left shoulder. 

"Toss me the keys," he says. He leaves off the _and don't touch me_ , but Sam hears it loud and clear, tosses them over. Dean's fingers tighten briefly around them, knuckles white, and he hauls himself to his feet, cracks his neck from side to side, and walks stiffly to the car. His boots smear through the lines in the sand, track marks where Sam dragged Dean’s limp body out here.

The sight of Dean stomping away loosens the tight bands of iron that have bound Sam down for a full year, ever since Dean made his deal like the only consequence of importance was getting Sam's eyes to open. Sam lets out a whoop, a roar of savage triumph, and trails his brother back to the car, watching Dean's fiercely upright form with intense pride. He did that, saved his brother from death and hell, and now nothing can take Dean away. 

*

It's a little anti-climactic that Dean's first destination is a dollar store. Not surprising, though, not when Sam really thinks about it. Dollar stores seem to spring up wherever Dean needs one: cheap fixes, places to find toiletries and snacks, little things he can MacGuyver into weapons or tools. He trails Dean through the store, watching as he scoops up a tiny bottle of mouthwash, a box of Cheez-Its, and a king-size sleeve of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups; all standard choices for breaking a three-day fast, and guaranteed to turn Dean's tongue green and then orange.

He's not expecting Dean to detour into the stationery aisle and stand in front of the journals and packets of loose-leaf refills. 

"Dean?" he asks, concerned that Dean's zoning out in front of pens and paper instead of tearing open the food and bringing the empty packets up to the counter with an apologetic, orange smile and a couple of dollar bills in his hand. Dean ignores him, or maybe doesn't even hear him, and starts forward when he finally finds what he's been looking for. 

Quick as a flash, it goes under his arm, and then Dean's heading for the counter, already unscrewing the ribbed plastic top off the little bottle, slamming the mouthwash back, and gargling while the dark-eyed girl behind the counter laughs and fishes out a plastic bag for his purchases. Dean holds up a finger, runs outside to spit, and comes back, pulling the last item out from under his arm; the girl's already scooped up and thrown out the bottle and cap and bagged the snacks. Finally Sam can see what Dean was looking for - the thickness of a one-subject notebook, black pebbly cover and no ornamentation, just numbers and letters picked out in gold; it's a five-year planner. 

It's a little weird, frankly, for Dean not to share, not to put the snacks somewhere they could both reach them, but Sam's stomach is rebelling anyway, too used to being tied up in knots to crave anything solid. Water, maybe, alcohol definitely, but nothing else is going to go down and stay down. Dean's hunched over the Impala's closed trunk, one hand on Dad's journal and a pen in the other; he's chewing absent-mindedly at his lower lip while he jots things down in the planner. After each entry he makes, he takes a second to snag some food, popping peanut butter cups into his mouth whole and tossing and catching little sharp crackers with ease. 

Sam feels like his brain has come unstuck when he finally figures out what Dean is up to. Every entry that Dad made in his journal that came with a timeline - "every seven years," "only appears on blue moon nights," "August of leap years" - is being entered into the new planner, filling little white squares with neat rows of black ink, making them look like patchwork whenever Dean flips pages forwards or backwards. This is different than the vague plans Dean's been throwing out all year, the false bravado of "after the Grand Canyon, and after the hellhounds, Sammy, you could go anywhere - California, an Ivy, whatever, just finish school; you're not a dropout." This is Dean believing that he has a future, that Sam has restored the years Dean desperately traded away. Sam's blood sings at the thought of the hunt, days and weeks of being in the car beside his brother, and he only wishes that Dean had found a ten-year planner instead.

*

Between the cases they find and the ones Dean's plotted out like he's Dad's social secretary, they stay plenty busy. Sam finds himself doing a little headbanging in the car, rocking out to Dean's music - indestructible as a cockroach - even when he's in the passenger seat with an open book on his lap. Dean's even ceded driving rights occasionally, looking only a little put out when he doesn't have the steering wheel to tap in time with the beat. 

And on their hunts, Sam's no longer half a step behind his brother, but keeping step with him, alongside him. Starting with a werewolf in Fresno, his is the hand that deals out death; he fires kill-shots and swings knives as if this is all he's ever known, exhilarated by the feelings of triumph and glory that rocket through him. If this is how hunting makes Dean feel, the whole world his to save or destroy, righteous and vengeful, then it's no wonder that Dean was the original evangelist, preaching the word of the Hunt, dismissing as unimportant the lesser pleasures of school, the normal life, and the real world - the mundane world, where people live their lives in shadow, unaware of whose sacrifice saves them, once and always. 

Dean seems content to let him take the lead, dropping back and fashioning himself into the wingman he'd once been for Dad, and Sam supposes there must be a kind of comfort in that for Dean, finding peace in the memory of old obedience, of faithful love. Dean's maybe not quite as sharp as he once was; there's too much that's taken a toll on him, and it's not like there's time to stop and let everything heal up properly - neither one of them would be able to sit still for long enough. 

Sam decapitates the siren, convinced he is right where he's supposed to be, doing what he was meant to do. He's never been more sure of anything in his life. Dean's wry voice streaks through his head - _Nice moves, Sammy. Like riding a bike, huh?_ \- and there's a grin - the old, mischievous, sparkling grin - on Dean's weary face.   
*

They're moving more swiftly and surely than ever, the two of them a lean hunting machine, getting rid of demons before other hunters are even aware of the problem. Everything moves like clockwork, like they're not just interdependent but perfectly synchronized. Sam wonders if unity like this could only come from a lifetime together, if he and Jess would have achieved something like it after years of sharing space and dreams, or if they never would have matched up because he'd accepted her as the baseline of normal and contorted himself to fit that. 

Dean still doesn't talk too much about his own feelings without provocation, but he seems to get that Sam's wired differently, and so he listens now, doesn't shy away or try to joke his way out of hearing Sam's confessions. Sam wakes up in the cold brightness of a January morning to find Dean dressed and sitting at the foot of his bed, flipping through channels with a lazy amusement, skipping financial news and talk shows for old sitcom reruns, just waiting for his brother to wake up to start the day off right. Sam rubs the water out of his eyes. This is the birthday Dean didn't think he'd get to see, the one Sam had prayed for, begged and pleaded and screamed for, before realizing that the only way to save Dean was to do it himself. 

Dean turns and smiles. "Morning."

Sam sits up, trying not to kick him, but there's only so much space to work with. "Happy birthday, Dean," Sam says, sitting still when Dean leans over to thumb the tears away from his skin. 

"C'mon, I'll let you buy me breakfast if you get your ass up and in the shower in the next five minutes." 

Sam refrains from pointing out that that sounds like a pretty damn good deal to him, just rolls his eyes and climbs out of bed. He scratches his belly on his way to the bathroom. "One of these days, that metabolism of yours is going to backfire on you, you know."

"Doubt it, Sasquatch," Dean fires back. "Hurry up, would you?"

Watching Dean sit in the square of sunlight while he mixes pepper into the ketchup slathered on top of his hash browns, licks the knife clean, and then spreads caramel sauce over his banana pancakes, Sam gets a flash of Jessica, sitting at their kitchen table, hair falling out of its clasp, eyes bright as she described the latest painting to change her life and smeared the fresh whipped cream from her hot chocolate over her waffles. "Dean," he says, putting down his oversized coffee cup, "did I ever tell you what Jess used to do that drove me absolutely crazy?" 

Dean takes a big bite of his hash browns and shakes his head, beckoning the waitress over for more coffee. "I'm all ears, Sammy," he says, mouth full, swallowing in time to give the waitress a smile. 

*

"No, no, stop," Sam pleads, still laughing and clutching his belly, aching from cotton candy and chili dogs, from stolen bites of Dean's funnel cake. "You _cannot_ be serious. No way."

The tips of Dean's ears have gone a little pink, but he meets Sam's incredulous gaze staunchly, even sports a bashful grin. "Why would I make this kind of shit up? I swear, Mom used to keep a tupperware under the front seat for me."

Sam finds a bench and throws himself down, letting Dean rearrange his legs to give himself room to sit too. "Yeah, but you drive _everywhere_. You don't fly, and you're in the car all the damn time!"

"It doesn't hit me when I'm the one driving, Sam," Dean explains patiently, tilting his face up to the bright May sunshine, obviously blissfully unaware that the sun is picking out silver rather than gold in his hair. "And it's better in the front seat than in the back."

"Seriously. You - Dean Winchester, defender to the death of the classic American car, prophet of the open road - are prone to motion sickness. And because of that, you're refusing to ride this roller-coaster with me."

"You got a tupperware handy?" Dean asks. 

Sam shakes his head, groaning at how full he feels, sprawled out like an emperor. 

"It was a rhetorical question, dumbass. I'll buy you one for your next birthday."

"Hey! What about your car? How come you don't -"

"You leave her out of this, Sam. None of this is her fault."

Sam sits up, then eyes his brother and tries to calculate the odds of his making a clean escape. "You know you're crazy, right?"

Dean chases after him and can't quite close his hand around Sam; when Sam pauses to let him catch up, he sees the lines of strain and pain around Dean's eyes, hidden by Dean's easy smile.

*

Sam takes the back roads, not only because he knows Dean likes driving down them and seeing the things that die out more slowly in small towns, like the helping-hand signs propped up in the front windows of houses that look like they've stayed in a family for generations, but because he wants to see the Christmas lights, the flights of fancy that people can reach, finding wonderlands in their own front yards.

Dean's face reflects the lights, green and red and white glowing against his skin, his closed eyelids, and Sam turns the volume down and eases his foot off the gas. They're not in any rush, and the diner at the end of the block has, he remembers, coffee cake that melts in your mouth.

The heat of the diner makes his cold face tingle, and Dean's cheeks are getting pink. A waitress with a Santa hat over her blonde curls raises a coffee pot in salute and nods when Sam tilts his head inquiringly. He finds a table near a window and watches the first flakes of snow drift down, speckle the Impala, and then disappear. In the window's reflection, he sees Dean's ghostly hands curl around a mug of coffee, and his brother hums in pleasure at the first satisfying sip.

Sam powers up the laptop and leaves most of the coffee cake for Dean, who's picking it apart crumb by crumb, not exactly restless or fidgeting, but making busywork nonetheless. Sam leans forward with excitement, his hand knocking against Dean's as he turns the laptop around. "Found a case," he says, and Dean ducks his head down to read, tilting the screen a little to remove the glare.

Dean's face goes hard as he reads; something is eviscerating children in West Virginia. Dean splits the remainder of the cake in two, bolts down his half, and stands, throwing cash on the table. "Let's get a move on," he says, and heads for the door.

*

Dorline, West Virginia is a pit of mud, and even the Impala balks, tires slipping and skidding on the slick roads. Dean half-wrestles and half-coaxes her into obedience while Sam reads the local newspapers by the dim map lights. There's only one place to stay, a cross between a motel and a bed-and-breakfast, called the Dew Drop Inn. Dean pulls up as close as he can to the entrance and Sam gets out, ducking his head down against the pounding rain. A man about the age Dad would have been is behind the counter, a mug of Irish coffee sending up swirls of steam near his elbow. He looks frankly shocked to see Sam, but pulls himself together enough to stand up straight and smile. "You need directions, son?"

"No, actually, I need a room. Two queens, if you have it." Sam fishes for his wallet and pulls out a MasterCard with the name Jeff Bentley.

The man's eyebrows go all the way up, but he just says, "Sure, sure. I got that. Here you go, room eleven. When you leave the office, make a left, then another left. It's across from the soda machine." He picks up the credit card and swipes it through his machine a few times, muttering about modern technology. Sam tenses a little; that card is one of the last Dean made before the deal was broken, part of the new life he wanted to give Sam, no outrageous rock star names or inside jokes, and it should be clean as a whistle. 

"Ah, there we go," the man says finally, as the machine beeps. "Always takes it a minute to get going."

"Thanks.” Sam takes back the card and pockets the key, jingling on a chain with a geode charm.

"Happy New Year, son," the man calls as the door closes behind him.

*

Dean insists on hitting this case with everything they've got, attacking on all fronts at once, so they split up, Dean taking the physical evidence - the children's mutilated bodies and the sites where they were found - while Sam talks to the families and waves his newest FBI badge around. 

He goes to home after home, small ranch-style houses with Christmas wreaths still on the front doors. They all have dingy, thin carpets and old, polished pianos in the living rooms that serve as display cases for framed photographs. There's not a lot of racial diversity in the town, and the victims reflect that: white, Christian children, all between the ages of six and eight, boys and girls alike.

The Bell home is the last on his list, and Marla Bell opens the door to him, wearing an apron and clutching a handkerchief with which she dabs at her overflowing, red-rimmed eyes. She leads him to a plastic-covered couch in the living room and he sits opposite a framed cross-stitch that commands _Trust in the LORD with all your heart_.

"April made that," she says, sitting on a straight-backed wooden chair bare of any cushions, pointing with one shaking hand at the cloth. "She insisted on picking out the colors herself, and she chose the text too. Said it was the easiest prayer in the world to remember." A sob escapes her, and she shakes in her chair, thin shoulders quivering.

"Mrs. Bell . . ." Sam begins, ineffectually. Dean seems to think that he's got some trick to get people to trust him hidden up his sleeve, but all he really has is a sense of loss that springs up whenever he hears about another senseless death.

"No," she says firmly, interrupting him. "Since Robert passed, she's all I had. I will bear it and I will move on. But you will find the man who killed my daughter and you will make him pay."

"Yes, I will," he promises, and steps back out into the rain, opening a huge black umbrella like a thundercloud over himself for protection.

*

He hasn't even bothered to climb out of his suit or loosen his tie because the idea hits him the minute he steps inside room eleven, the rain beating steadily against the windows. He plugs in his laptop and does some research on the local Catholic church, finding calls for funding, a history of the stained glass windows that adorn the walls, and even a missionary effort to raise one little boy in Kenya as a good Christian child, but not much of anything suspicious. Still, he can't quite shake the feeling that there's something eluding him, something he and Dean will have to put their heads together to puzzle through.

Dean walks in then, heavy boots stopping just inside the door. He strips them off, then his muddy jeans and jacket, peels away his sodden shirts, and heads for the bathroom. 

"You okay?" Sam calls after him.

"Sure," Dean says after too long a pause. "Just need to warm up."

Sam checks his watch; it's just about six and it's been a long day already. "Have you eaten anything today?" He'd bet the answer is no; he's been fed tea and cake all day by grieving mothers who live by a code of hospitality, but all Dean had in the car was a couple of energy bars and a half-empty bottle of water. "I'll go get something, okay?"

"Yeah." The bathroom door opens and Dean sticks his head out, face lined and drawn. "Just not - not pizza, okay?"

Sam knows he means nothing with red sauce, nothing that could look even vaguely like the bodies Dean's been seeing all day and will keep seeing even after they kill this thing. "Yeah, I know," he says. Dean doesn't reply, retreating back into his steam-filled sanctuary, and Sam heads out the door.

The restaurant two blocks away, Doreen's, has a baked mac and cheese special, and while Doreen is boxing up two servings of salad with Thousand Island dressing, macaroni, green beans with almonds, and pumpkin pie, a man standing with a group of friends comes over and waits for Sam to acknowledge him. He's a stocky man with not a lot of brownish hair, pulling at the brim of a grimy baseball cap and looking uncertain. "Can I help you?" Sam asks, but the man stays silent, eyes fixed on Sam's face.

"I'm Joe Benson. Heard you met with my wife today, that you're looking into what happened to Joey."

The suit and tie, as well as being an unfamiliar face, must have given him away, made him ridiculously easy to pick out. "Yes, sir, I am. My partner and I are giving these murders our full attention." He doesn't soften the horror of what's happened by calling it a tragedy, won't diminish the children's deaths by referring to them as "the case"; this man's whole world has gone to hell. Benson nods once, looking satisfied, and retreats back to his huddle. When Sam goes to the register to pay, Doreen tells him the bill's already been settled.

He comes back to the room to find Dean in clean, dry clothes, curled on his side on one bed, pen in one hand and head propped up on the other, looking down at his notebook, resting on top of an open map. 

Dean doesn't look much better, but before Sam can say anything, Dean looks up with a look of grim satisfaction on his face. "I know what happened here," he says, and Sam nods, dumps the food on the bed, and pulls fresh clothes out of his duffel, hearing Dean's unspoken promise _we're gonna get that bastard_ echoing in his head.

He changes quickly and hangs his wet suit up in the shower, coming out of the bathroom to find Dean picking at the mac and cheese, eating just enough to preclude any nagging; even that, perversely, is a comfort, a sign of how in tune with each other they are. "What'd you find?" Dean asks, scooping up almonds and even snagging a green bean or two.

Sam gets his own dinner, working backwards and starting with the pie, and puts his feet up on the edge of Dean's bed. "All the victims were Catholic, the right age for a First Communion. I couldn't find much on the church itself, but that's the only thing that links these kids and excludes the ones who weren't taken."

Dean's nodding, lips tight. "Yeah, the sites where the kids were found form a cross. Maybe an upside-down cross, if you look at it from that side."

Dean is radiating fury. 

"What?" Sam asks.

Dean just shakes his head. 

"You think this is a human being going around killing these kids?"

"Sam -"

"Tell me, Dean."

"EMF meter didn't make a peep all day. Not one murder site had anything supernatural about it. But I saw bootprints at one site and cigarette ash at another. And the kids' bodies - this wasn't something tearing them apart like those daevas. There wasn't any sulfur. Someone sliced them open for a purpose, and he was neat about it."

Dean goes mute and miserable once he's finished laying out his case; he stacks his mostly-full containers of food on his bedside table and turns off his light. Sam's still cold, the weather and Dean's unhappy conviction both contributing, and he figures a long, hot shower will alleviate at least part of the problem.

Their dopp kits and the first aid kit are all, as always, set neatly next to the sink. The first aid kit's not latched shut, though, and Sam opens it up, figuring he should take stock of what they've got and what they're running low on. His hand closes around the new bottle of Advil Liqui-Gels, rattles it reflexively, and frowns when he realizes it's nearly empty. The cap's popped half off, sitting askew like threading it back on would have taken too much effort.

Sam's gut clenches in fear and he replays the evening, realizing only now that Dean had stayed lying down on his bed, not cleaning weapons or even pacing about the room as he went through the case. Dean's looked tired lately, but he hasn't said a word, and Sam had figured it was nothing serious. He pokes his head out of the bathroom and sees Dean curled on his side, snoring quietly, a frown deepening the lines on his face.

Sam showers quickly and gets into bed, thinking of Dean and considering the case, turning them both over in his mind until it gives out on him and he falls asleep.

*

When he wakes up, there's an idea in his head that won't leave him alone. The rain's let up, finally, and there's a note from Dean saying he went out to get coffee and breakfast for them both. He splashes a little water on his face to wake himself up and goes back to the laptop.

There. There it is. After all the research he did to figure out how to break Dean's goddamned crossroads deal, he's got some interesting websites bookmarked, and this one is both explicit and scarily accurate.

"Dean," he says, when his brother walks in with cinnamon donuts and two jumbo coffees, "I found it."

"Found what?" Dean walks over to the table to set the food down, moving slowly to avoid spilling hot liquid, but his halting movements reminds Sam sharply of last night's discovery.

"First of all, explain this," he says, fetching the bottle of Advil and waving it in front of Dean's nose.

"Aw, can't figure out the childproof cap?" Dean smirks. "It's okay, I'm here for you, Sammy."

"Why've you been popping so many?"

"What, it's a capital crime now to take aspirin?"

"Just tell me, Dean."

"Had a headache a couple of times, that's all. Nothing to get worked up about."

"You never take any medication unless it's forced down your throat," Sam says.

Dean looks shamefaced. "Yeah, well, maybe I thought you had better things to do than play Florence Nightingale."

That actually does make sense in a Deanish sort of way, the philosophy of needing to stay strong to watch his brother's back.

"Hey." Dean snaps his fingers in front of Sam's face. "Not getting any younger here. What did you find?"

"Yeah." He turns his laptop around so that they can both see the screen. "I think you're right - the guy doing all the killing is human. But. It looks like he's planning to become something other than human."

"Which means he's fair game," Dean says, and Sam nods. _Told you we'd get you, you sonuvabitch_ Sam hears. "Okay, let's bring this motherfucker down."

*

They start at the point where the bars of the cross intersect, only to find that's where it ends too. Gerald Romney wasn't expecting anyone to piece his plot together, and hadn't prepared for discovery or defense. Sam's blade swings sweetly through the air and Romney falls right there, surrounded by evidence of his crimes.

Standing in Romney's house of horrors, looking at everything the man had acquired to aid him in his quest to become a demon here on earth, Sam gets a sudden inspiration.

"What?" Dean asks.

"What?"

"You're looking at me like you're calculating how many tears you need to squeeze out to get the last Rice Krispie treat, Sam. I recognize that look."

"I'm just thinking."

"Aw, just spit it out. We got the guy, the demon, whatever. What now?"

"I think there's a lot here that Henrickson should see."

"You want to hand the keys to this place over to the FBI? What've you been smoking?"

"There's only so much he can deny, right, I mean, there's got to be a limit. Maybe leaving this stuff for him will get him to piece some information together, realize we're not the ones he needs to be fighting."

Dean's silent for a long moment, then looks up with a smile. "At the very least, it'll be an excellent time-waster."

*

They're packing up their gear from room eleven, standing back to back and slinging clothes into duffels, when Dean says, "I want to visit Bobby."

Sam turns, but all he sees is Dean's broad back. "No."

"I'm not asking you to go, Sam. I know you don't want to see him. But I'm saying _I_ need to see him, and I'm gonna go."

"Please." He reaches out, puts his hand on Dean's shoulder and turns him halfway around. "Can't you just call him? Email him? Do you have to drive all the way out there?"

"Sam, look," Dean sighs, "don't make a big deal out of this. I'm not taking off, okay? I just want to see him. If you want to come, that'd be great, but I'm thinking you don't, so just think of this as a little vacation, okay?" Dean tosses the five-year planner over. "In fact, I think our next big gig is in three weeks at Woodstock, so why don't you go up early, catch up with Sarah, and meet me there February third?"

That's such classic Dean that he laughs, reassured that there's nothing seriously wrong. Cases involving kids always hit Dean hard; maybe he just needs to drink a few beers with someone who wasn't living the case night and day. "Can I have the car?"

"Not on your life," Dean snorts. "I'll take you to the bus station, Romeo."

*

Dean's careful with the car, negotiating the slick and muddy roads while Sam fiddles with the radio. "You should be able to get something in Charleston, I think," Dean says as the windshield wipers work overtime, clearing away the mud that kicks up as they go. "It's pretty much a straight shot on 79 up to Pennsylvania, and then there's probably all sorts of buses and trains out of Pittsburgh."

Only one radio station comes in clearly through the rain, and a carpet installation jingle gives way to the insistent triple beat and wailing licks of "Foxey Lady." Dean laughs. "I was gonna ask if you changed your mind, but I think that's a sign, Sammy."

He waits until the song's fading away. "What makes you so sure Sarah's even going to want to see me?"

"Um, because I have eyes, and therefore could see her ogling you every chance she got. Dude, she would've jumped you in a heartbeat if you'd just quit it with all the defensive body language."

Sam can feel his cheeks heating up a little, thinking back on his stubborn fear, remembering how much time Dean had spent coaxing him into enjoying life again. "Shut up," he says, rolling his eyes. Maybe Dean's right, maybe Sarah will welcome him with open arms, and he'll be having too much fun to worry about what Dean's getting up to with Bobby.

"With that kind of sweet talk, she'll be all over you for sure," Dean says. "Relax, man, you're going to see a hot girl, not a firing squad. Live a little. For me."

"Yeah, because _you_ really need to live vicariously through _me_ ," he retorts, though now that he thinks about it, he can't remember the last time Dean took off with a girl from a bar or even went out on his own. Maybe all the hard living from the year of the deal got that out of his system and purged it, temporarily at least.

"Oh my God," Dean groans when a Maroon 5 song comes on next. "Blasphemy."

Sam's feeling kind, so he kills the radio rather than fighting over rock gods and getting another lecture on the history of what Dean deems to be great music. All he can hear is the rattle of the heater and the swish of the wipers, and the silence brings up a memory he didn't know he'd hung on to. "Do you remember the last time you drove me to a bus station?"

Dean just says, "Yeah," and leaves it at that, but Sam can remember the quiet stillness between them, the way he'd shivered even though it had been a warm September day, and the tension in Dean's hands on the steering wheel. College had been looming ahead of him, a grand adventure he should have been able to be excited about, or even take for granted, but instead it had been a trial by fire just to get there. He'd made the decision to go, but it had been his father who'd pushed him away. And it had been Dean who had taken him to the doorstep of that dream.

Dean clears his throat. "Hey, when you get there, tell Sarah I said hi."

*

The bus to Pittsburgh is mostly empty, only a few passengers rattling around like fireflies in a jar. There's a large group - an extended family, maybe - all clustered together at the back of the bus, taking up several rows. One small boy, two or three at the most, twirls happily in the narrow aisle, throwing himself with abandon on the nearest lap every few minutes, and he's always picked up and fed a morsel of something, then either noisily kissed or lightly spanked before being set down to run free in the aisle again. Sam watches them all, their voices never raising above a gentle hum, the lilt giving away their accents, passing food from one person to the next like they're sitting around a campfire and swapping stories.

His stomach growls a little and he ignores it, not hungry for the packaged crap at the bottom of his bag. He's got a long way to go, and while he has the room, he might as well sleep. He pushes the armrest out of the way, puts his jacket under his head and his bag under his knees, and stretches out as much as he can across the two seats.

He wakes up cranky from his catnap, finding his phone buzzing next to his ear. When he flips it open, there's a text message from Dean: _What you bitchin about now?_ Sam grins and tries to figure out how to draw a hand with its middle finger raised using only the keys on his phone.

*

No one has bothered shoveling a path out of the New Paltz station, so he picks his way as carefully as he can over to the taxi stand. His socks are soaked and the slice of pizza he grabbed is sitting like a greasy bowling ball in his stomach. The cab driver he gets is singularly unhelpful, refusing to open the trunk for his bag and unwilling to turn the heat up enough to reach the back seat.

At least he doesn't feel quite so guilty when he hands over a false credit card, and he keeps his wits about him enough to ask to be dropped a few houses down from Sarah's, in case the card ever gets traced back to him.

It's only when he's walking down the circular road that functions as the driveway to the Blake estate that he realizes the idiocy of what he's doing. He's got no reason to show up, wet and bedraggled, and expect a girl he hasn't seen in nearly five years to take him in. He slings his duffel across his other shoulder and does a swift about-face, only to hear Sarah call out his name. 

"Sam!" she shouts, and he turns to see her leaning out of a second-floor window, dark hair falling forward as if to aid the Rapunzel impression.

He can feel a grin stretching his face and he jogs toward the massive front doors. She's there, waiting, an answering smile on her face, holding her arms out for a warm hug. "How did you know?" he asks.

"Your brother," she says, looking up at him through her lashes, "is a remarkably pithy correspondent." She holds out her cell phone so that he can read Dean's text message: _Sending very important package by special delivery. Home to accept?_ "I had a feeling that might be you."

His cheeks are getting hot - even if Sarah didn't pick up on Dean's double entendre, it's still mortifying - and she laughs. "Dean's got quite a way with words."

Okay, so she got it. "Don't hold it against me," he asks, and she pretends to look at him appraisingly, so he pastes on his most sincere face.

"Stop," she finally giggles. "Any more of that face and I'll be wondering where you keep your halo." She leans in, her flowery perfume sweet and warm in his nose, and kisses his cheek. "It's good to see you again, Sam."

"It's really good to see you, too," he says as she steps back to let him step into the house. This place is a palace, huge and opulent, and that's just the entryway, tiled in slick marble with tiny bronze statues nestled beside green-leaved plants on top of small dark wood tables.

"This way," she says, walking with one light hand just barely touching his arm, leading him to a grand staircase. She picks the flight on the left and skips quickly up it, heading for a room that's decorated in hunter green and cream, richly furnished but still somehow strangely anonymous, like an expensive suite at an exclusive hotel. He'd bet that this is one of many guest rooms furnished for a male visitor, and that across the hall or maybe in another wing entirely there is a series of pink and white rooms designed with important ladies in mind. "Sam?" she asks, interrupting his train of thought. "Is this okay?"

She's so casually generous; she can afford to be. "It's great, Sarah, really. Sorry, I'm just a little tired after the trip and that stupid cab driver."

"And probably hungry too?" she guesses, big grin on her face. "We can -"

"Actually, I really need to clean up before we do anything else, if that's okay." His toes are squelching uncomfortably inside his wet and probably toxic socks and there's a faint aroma of public transportation clinging to his hair and clothes.

"Yeah, okay," Sarah nods agreeably. "I'll just be downstairs. Come down whenever you're ready." She pulls the door shut behind her and he slumps to the ground, not wanting to contaminate the clean, soft bed with his dirty clothes. He digs through his bag for his phone, trying to decide if he should call or text Dean. His dilemma's rendered moot when he hears a steady beeping, and realizes Dean's already sent him a message. _Still hot. Still checking out your ass. Yes or no?_

"What are you, in sixth grade, Dean?" he asks, amused, when Dean finally picks up after a dozen rings. "Check yes or no?"

"Me in sixth grade or you in sixth grade?" Dean asks, clearly differentiating between the two with an obnoxious sing-song voice.

"Yes, she's still hot -"

"That part I knew, man. Google doesn't lie."

"You're like a stalking Yenta, Dean! What's wrong with you?"

"Oh, too many things to name," Dean laughs.

"And, yeah, I think she's glad to see me, and that's all you're going to get." Actually, he probably shouldn't make it sound like he's daring Dean to drop everything and come out here. "I'll call you, okay?"

"Only when you come up for air, huh? Sammy, you dirty dog."

"Just -" No, it's not worth protesting, because Dean's just slipping into a role. "Are you there yet?"

"About another hour on the road and I'll be kickin' back with a little holy beer."

He refuses to picture that warm kitchen, those teetering stacks of books, or Bobby. "I'll call you," he repeats instead, and hangs up.

*

The bathtub is gleaming green marble, streaked with beige, and big enough for him to swim a couple of laps in. There is no way he can settle for anything less now that he's seen it, and he turns the taps, lets the water fill up while he hunts in the closet for bath soap. All he can find are these chalky spheres that look kind of like globes made of SweeTart stuff and smell vaguely like cologne. They fizz when he drops them into the water, dissolving and making the whole bathroom smell musky and sweet.

Under the water, his mind finally falls silent, and the lapping of the water against him is like the easy motion of the Impala when Dean's driving and praising her, when they're not running to or running away, just driving, watching people and places, animals and industries go by from the safety of their car.

He stays under until he can't breathe. He surfaces, dives below again, and emerges once more.

*

"Sarah," he says as he walks down the stairs; she's curled up in a wing chair with _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_ clutched in one hand. At the first touch of his hand to her shoulder, she starts, coming wide awake in an instant, hardbound book falling off her lap and landing with a thump.

"Sorry, Sam," she says, looking mortified as she pushes wisps of hair away from her face, half-squatting nervously to retrieve her book, standing again when he beats her to it.

Something about her behavior feels wrong, and he needs to set things straight. "Look, Sarah, I think maybe I gave you the wrong impression. I'm not expecting anything here, and I know you haven't been waiting around for me to show up at your door again. And I know what Dean's message said, but that's Dean, he's like convinced himself that you're madly in love with me and that you've waited for me all this time, and I just want you to know that I came here because I liked you and wanted to hang out with you and was hoping maybe you'd want to hang out with me too. That's all."

Sarah tilts her head to the side like she's assessing him, but he sees from the way the color's rising in her cheeks and her eyes have gone a little wider than usual that at least part of what he said struck a chord.

She doesn't seem to be able to speak, though, so he decides to just come out with it. "I know that I already owe you about a million favors, but could I ask for one more?"

Now he's getting an eyebrow raise from her, and she's surprisingly good at that.

"Have you got a washer and dryer somewhere in this place?"

She clears her throat delicately. "I think we should be able to accommodate you," she says. "Grab your stuff and meet me in the kitchen."

*

Sorting his dirty, smelly laundry in front of Sarah sounds like a surefire way to negate whatever leftover heat there is between them, but at least he won't have to fabricate reasons for the bloodstains that mark about half of his shirts and at least two pairs of jeans. He ends up grabbing the whole duffel and heads back downstairs. Sarah's in the kitchen, drinking from a round little bottle of Orangina. She's rebraided her hair and looks more relaxed now than she has since he first showed up. "Mmpf," she says when she sees him, then swallows and starts over. "Want something to drink?" 

"No thanks," he says, then waits for her to cap the bottle and lead the way. She opens a door and heads down the stairs and he follows her into the basement. It's a warren of rooms, some of them with closed doors and extremely sophisticated thermostats visible by the entryways. "Art storage?" he hazards a guess. 

"Some of it, yeah," she says. "Not any of the stuff I like - Dad let me put those paintings up. But some of it is really valuable, so we have to take care of it."

"And what's the rest?" he asks.

"Just ordinary basement stuff. Furnace, water heater, laundry." She heads across the main room to a shadowy doorway, her steps silent on the thick, tightly-woven carpet. She snaps on the lamp, and he can see a bright little alcove lined with closed wooden cabinets and featuring a washer and dryer. "Okay, hop to it," she says, opening the washer's lid. 

There's no point sorting the clothes, he decides; they hadn't been separated any of the approximately eight hundred other times they've been tossed into a washing machine, and one time won't restore the colors and whites back to their original brightness. It's much better if they're a little faded anyway - less conspicuous, less memorable. He just grabs clothes by the handful, frankly a little astonished by the stink of them, and he finds a packet of pungent herbs, wrapped in a cotton handkerchief, still stuffed into a pocket of one of the pairs of jeans. He should have gotten rid of that weeks ago, and he chucks it into the trash can sitting by the big wicker basket. 

The washer is big enough to accommodate everything in his bag in one load, and Sarah appears beside him holding a jug of environmentally-friendly detergent that smells more expensive than the cologne he used to wear on special occasions at Stanford. He dumps a capful of clear liquid in, gets the machine going, and opens the wooden folding chair propped up against the wall. Sarah seats herself on top of the washer and looks at him. 

"So," she says, glowing in the lamplight. "Did you mean what you said?"

"Can you narrow that down for me?"

"That you liked me but weren't expecting anything from me."

"Yeah, of course I meant it. You haven't seen me in years, and while our meeting was, um, memorable, I don't think you could call it one of the best times of your life. I mean, your friend died, and you saw a ghost for the first time, and . . . what?" 

She's looking at him, but not meeting his eyes, like she's thinking about something else. "You've got . . ." she leans forward a little before realizing she can't reach him. "Come here." 

He stands and gets a little closer. "You've got an eyelash on your cheek," she says, one fingertip light as a feather glancing over his face and finally holding it up in proof. He can tell from the look in her eyes that she's waiting to see if he remembers his own long-ago, fumbling attempt to touch her. 

"You should be the one to make a wish," he says, and she leans forward to kiss him.

Her lipstick tastes waxy, but her mouth is sweet with Orangina. Tantalizingly hot, too, and he pulls back only enough to fit their mouths together a little more snugly. He's aware that the room has gotten a little humid from the washer, can feel a little moisture on her face when he touches her cheek. She moans a little, drawing him closer with her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. 

This is not how he had thought it would happen, when he'd even let himself imagine that Dean was right and that she might welcome him back with open arms. But Sarah is so eager, so willing to be kissed breathless, that there's no reason to stop. He leans forward a little, supporting her back with his hands, and she goes soft and boneless, heavy and helpless, letting him hold her up, depending on his strength completely. The washing machine is rocking beneath her, vibrations he can feel from his toes all the way up, and he wonders how many of the choked little noises she's making are because of him and how many are because of the insistent rhythm pulsing through her. 

She's pushing him away, and he lets himself be pushed until he hears her gasp and registers that she just needed air, that she wasn't trying to escape his kiss. He pulls a little on the end of her long braid, just enough of a tug to tip her head back, let her unfocused eyes linger on the ceiling, and he dives for her neck, elongated and trembling. She's flushed, so beautiful, and he can feel the heat of the blood beneath her skin when he sucks noisily at her neck, letting his tongue rasp roughly against her smooth flesh. Her fingers are getting tangled in his hair, not yanking - not yet - but flexing and relaxing in unconscious mimicry of thrust and release, the pattern they're running headlong toward.

"I want . . . so long . . . this, Sam, uh," she's mumbling, pulling him closer still, and he can't tell if it's her words that are incoherent or if he's too caught up in the heat of her to compute what she's saying.

He leans forward a little more, resting one forearm on the cool, shuddering surface of the washing machine, and slides his free hand down the outside seam of her jeans. Her legs tighten around his waist in response, and he traces a path back up that long, long leg, slipping underneath her thick baby blue sweater. All she's wearing underneath the sweater is a scrap of silk, unbearably smooth and unspeakably thin, finer than an eyelash. His fingers slip against it, but then it bunches easily in his fist when he pushes it out of the way. He can feel a thin sheen of sweat between her breasts, can feel the moister skin of the underside of her breasts, heavy and still shielded from view. He wants to see her, wants to hear her scream his name and not just pant it out in warm little breaths against his neck, wants to have her mouth around his dick, wants to have her hands on his ass, pulling him deeper inside her, and he wants to hear what she wants him to do to her, every last thing in exquisite detail, and he looks at her eyes, neither blue nor green, glittering with lust, closing in pleasure, and then the buzzer goes off and the washing machine rocks to a halt.

*

There's no sudden starting away, no sense of the spell being broken; they both knew what they were doing, where they were headed, and there's no cause for shame. Still, the mood shifts and he watches her pull back slightly, open her eyes, and put the back of her hand to one of her glowing cheeks. "Sam," she says, her voice a little strangled, and he doesn't answer her, not with words. He lets the hand on her skin keep working, rolling a nipple between his fingers, lets his thumb continue to sketch abstract patterns on her hidden, hot flesh; it's a long, slow, delicious retreat, fingers slipping down, teasing as they go, until finally his hand emerges back into the light and she's sitting mostly upright again. 

She looks a little shaky, so he puts his hands on either side of her waist and helps her slide off the washing machine; she stumbles and clings precisely because she's trying too hard to stand on her own. Her lipstick is smudged and messy and her hair is falling out of its neat braid. He pivots her and seats her in the little folding chair, then turns back to pull his clothes out of the washing machine. 

An unfamiliar trill sounds, and they realize at the same time that it's the house phone. The sound is coming from the main room, and Sarah looks like she's debating whether it's worth the effort to get up. She seems to decide that it is and she brushes by him as she leaves, quick, light steps that are almost too soft to hear, and he gets back to the task at hand, retrieving his wet, fragrant clothes and shaking them flat, then tossing them into the dryer. 

He sits in the little wooden chair and zones out watching the clothes tumbling dry, his eyes tracking a red-toed sock that keeps working its way between shirts and jeans. When the buzzer finally goes off, he realizes that Sarah never came back, and now that the steady humming thunk-thunk noise of the dryer has stopped, he can hear her voice, rising and falling in conversation, from the main room. He takes his time pulling the clothes out of the dryer, turning everything right side out and folding them neatly. Going through the duffel, he sets aside what's still inside - a few weapons, his phone, the five-year planner, a Band-Aid tin stuffed with strips of pills, bandages, gauze, and condoms, and his dopp kit. He gets rid of the detritus of crumpled receipts, empty power bar wrappers, and the sheet of motel stationery on which he'd jotted down Sarah's address. There's a small handheld vacuum in one of the cupboards, and he gets rid of the crumbs and dirt that have accumulated in his bag; there's something relieving about putting everything to rights. The neat stacks of clean clothes go back in the main compartment of the duffel, and the rest of his stuff finds a place in the side pockets. 

He pulls the strap over his shoulder and leaves the alcove, turning off the light. Sarah's still on the phone, gesturing emphatically even though he's the only one who can see her. "No, Dad, I need that piece for the 'Life and Loves of Mary Cassatt' exhibition that the Dorsky is running. I asked you about that months ago, when we got the letter." She pauses to listen, then bursts out, angrily, "No, I'm not suggesting we give it away! Think of it as free publicity!" She pulls the phone away from her ear and looks up at the ceiling, taking a deep breath; he moves then, just to let her know he's there, and her eyes widen at the sight of him. Bringing the phone back up to her ear, she says, "Yes. Yes. I know, Dad. I'll send you an email. Yes, I love you too." She hangs up the phone with enough force to make it clang with a weird vibration, then turns to him; there's a completely wicked twinkle in her eye. "Want to go for a ride, Sam?" she asks, lips curving into a naughty smile when she realizes he's not about to refuse her.

*

Daniel Blake might well be the biggest douchebag on the eastern seaboard, but there's no denying the man knows his cars. Sarah puts him behind the wheel of Daniel's prized electric blue Maserati Spyder, encourages him to floor it, and laughs long and loud when they whip around the curves of the narrow country roads made to look like horse lanes, very upper crust. The only thing that's keeping the moment from being absolutely perfect is the knowledge that Dean wouldn't be jealous, not really; he's too in love with his own car to get much more than a little thrill from driving anything else, even one of the rarest, most expensive, and unworthily-owned cars ever. All Dean would do is whistle through his teeth and then shake his head at a schmuck like Daniel Blake owning such a beauty and keeping it locked up instead of letting it out to do what it was made to do. Still. There's no point taking the car out if he's not ready to see everything it can do; he presses down on the accelerator with a heavy foot and lets the rumble of the engine tear through him as he pulls Sarah closer.

*

"Home," she says, decisively, though he'd bet money that she'd planned to take him out to dinner for his first night in town.

He eyes her curiously, quickly, not wanting to lose sight of the road, and he catches her direct gaze for a moment. "Don't want to share you tonight," she confesses, voice a murmur in the darkness.

She seems to have gotten some self-control after that, because while he's busy returning the Spyder to its designated spot in the Blake garage, she's stepped demurely out and walked calmly into the house, no extra swing to her hips or anything. 

"I was thinking we could order in," she says when he steps into the living room. She's curled on the couch, lounging with the cordless phone in one hand. "Thai, Indian, sushi? What sounds good?"

She has just got to be kidding. He tests out the theory by plucking the phone from her hand and tossing it aside, and she smiles up at him when he holds out his hand, hauls her to her feet, and leads the way upstairs.

Her bedroom is a reminder of all the differences between them, sophisticated with its pale green textured paint and blond wood furniture, impressive copies of some of the world's most recognizable paintings hanging in heavy frames. But the look in her eyes is negating all of that, saying that all that's been missing from the room is him. He takes her at her word and strips her naked.

He's done before she even thinks to reciprocate, and he lets himself look her over, see what his fingers had already discovered. Her breasts are heavy, oval rather than round, with large, soft nipples that look more lavender than pink in the lamplight. She's strongly built, toned body narrowing to form a perfect hourglass shape, and her hips flare out, wide and insistent. Her skin is the most beautiful he's ever seen, her best feature; standing there with the shine of the light on her, he could believe that Sarah had just descended from on high, or sprang to life from some ancient mythology, because she bears no imperfect marks, just glows with health. 

Sarah snaps off the light, cutting him off from studying the rising tide of pink across her skin, and steps closer, reaching out for him. Her hands are still cold from the moonlit drive, and he sucks in a breath as the muscles in his stomach contract involuntarily. She keeps going for the button of his jeans, undeterred, and pops it open. Tall as she is even when she isn't wearing her high heels, she's still not tall enough to pull his shirt easily over his head, so he ducks down just a bit, taking over the task when she totters on her tip-toes. He kicks off his shoes, then lets her kneel down to strip him of his socks; she mimics his trick from the laundry room and runs her hand up the outside seam of his jeans, stroking him like a restive animal, and he figures that there's no point in drawing this out any longer. He pulls off his jeans, taking his boxers along with them, and steers her to the bed. 

Back up on her tip-toes, she kisses him, winding her arms around her neck and bringing them flush against each other. He keeps sliding his tongue against hers while he lays her down, and though her legs spread automatically and her feet meet insistently at the small of his back, she just continues to kiss him and doesn't press for more. 

He realizes in that moment that being with Sarah is different from being with anyone else. Because Sarah - unlike Jess - knows the truth about his life, the secret he guarded so zealously for so long. And Sarah - unlike Madison - not only knows, but survived her brush with the supernatural; she wasn't tainted or destroyed by it. And Sarah just means more than any of the other girls who giggled, took him to bed, and shouted out whatever fake name Dean had put on his ID; Sarah kisses him like she has not, could not, forget the kiss they shared years ago, in the doorway of her father's gallery with his brother looking on, their mouths fused together while their hips rocked gently in time. 

Sarah is in for the night of her life.

Every single thing that he learned from being with Jess, every trick he's ever pulled with a one-night stand that got a positive reaction - they're all fair game right now. He pulls away from Sarah's eager mouth and traces the tips of his fingers and then his lips down the center of her body. Holding her thighs nearly flat against the bed, he gives thanks for the flexibility he had guessed at from the yoga mat rolled up in one corner of the room and ducks his head down, letting his nose brush against the dark curls of pubic hair. The tip of his tongue darts out, flitting like a butterfly sucking nectar, quick little licks, barely enough to get a taste of her. The old standby of writing the alphabet with his tongue against her clit is the way to go here, and he's up to "G" when he registers the silence around him, the way her legs aren't tightening around his ears in ecstasy and totally in defiance of his grip, but lying lax and unresponsive under his hands.

"Sarah?" he asks, lifting his head and licking his lips, tonguing away the wetness he'd been chasing.

She sits halfway up, reclining on her side, one arm from elbow to wrist supporting her weight, and reaches out to turn on the lamp on the bedside table. Her dark hair spills across her breasts and back; one nipple peeks through the tangle, and he reaches for it, because he knows just how to play to get her to moan, to scream, to do whatever she does when she's too wound up to think or hush or even breathe. Sarah pulls back just far enough to elude his fingers. "Sam, stop," she says, the look on her face remote and uncomfortably sharp-sighted.

"What's the matter?" he asks. He was definitely getting every signal right; there's no way he could have misinterpreted anything. Maybe she's just worried about the fact that he hasn't got a condom on yet.

"I don't want this," she says, lying there like an odalisque, the living, breathing mirror to the one rendered in smooth brushstrokes and oil paint that's hanging above her bed; one of the girl's hands is picking grapes from a bowl of lush fruit and the pink, nimble fingers of the other hand are employed in playing with herself under a transparent white veil. He doesn't let his eyes drift back down to Sarah, because he's frozen with the fear that he's done something unforgivable without ever meaning to. Up until a moment ago, she had been responding.

"I don't want you to just get me off. I want to be in bed with you, Sam; I want you to talk to me." Sarah speaks her mind and then just watches him, waiting to see what he will do.

He inches closer and starts again. He's done dirty talking before, though never with someone who knew his real name, someone whose name was on the tip of his own tongue. "You're so beautiful, Sarah," he murmurs against her skin, tongue slipping out to lap at her breast. His hand steals downward, and he runs one finger over and around her before letting it sink slowly into the heat of her. "I'm going to open you up, hold you there, let you feel every last inch of me -"

"Sam! Stop!" she says, sounding not panicked but exasperated. "I don't need a narrator either." She pushes at his shoulders, forcing him back, and gets to her knees so that they're facing each other, kneeling on the bed. "I want to hear about you. Can you do that for me, Sam? I've thought so much about you; I want to know what your life has been like."

He gets it then, and leans forward to kiss her, to nibble on her lower lip, unconsciously pouted out with her plea. His fingers tangle in her hair and she tips her head back, baring her throat. "We killed - Dean killed - the demon that killed my mom and my girlfriend," he says, dragging his mouth up the length of her neck, feeling her pulse speed up and throb against his lips. She's ticklish around her belly, a fact he discovers when he trails his fingers along her sides, confessing, "My dad died so that Dean could live." She's moaning softly now. He rests his cheek on her belly, feeling each quick breath she takes, hearing the whimpers she's trying to keep locked in her throat. "Then I died." She flinches before he runs his fingers over her smooth skin and continues, "Dean sold his soul to bring me back to life." 

His mouth opens over her, hot breath steaming up her skin, and he pulls back to smell the tangy scent of her arousal. His fingers stroke inside her, twisting gently, watching her come apart against his hand. She's still shuddering when he holds her open and pushes in, still no condom, but she's got to be on the pill. Her eyes widen as he thrusts insistently into her, his hands pulling her waist nearly off the bed, her back arched up and the crown of her head dragging against the pillow; when her eyes regain some kind of focus, he growls, "I saved him, Sarah," and twists his hips sharply enough to make her cry out all over again. "I got him out of the deal," he snarls, his words cutting through her sated cries. He comes in a rush and slumps against her, his head pillowed on her yielding breast.

"Sam?" she murmurs, carding her fingers through his hair. Her thumb slides along his face, encountering his tears; she hesitates and pulls her hand away. He keeps crying silently, not even shaking, just leaking tears, and she shifts until she can draw the blankets up over them and get both of her arms around him. The light still burns brightly over them.

*

His jeans are ringing. Somehow, that doesn't seem all that odd. Sam lifts his head, grimacing as a strand of drool strings out, stretching between his mouth and Sarah's breast, blinks blearily against the sunshine and the bright yellow light of her bedside lamp, and heaves himself into a seated position.

_That's Dean's ring_ , he registers suddenly, and he wonders that Sarah can sleep right through it. He staggers over and winces as he bends down, pawing through the pile of clothes on the floor, fingers fumbling through each pocket.

He finally finds the phone and flips it open. "Yeah?"

"Morning, lazybones," Dean says, bright and cheery, and Sam blinks slowly, as if he can buy himself some time that way.

"Dean? What're you doing awake already?" The antique brass clock on the bedside table near the window reads nine a.m. That makes it seven out in South Dakota, right? Or is that one of those weird states that splits itself? He used to know this stuff.

"Well, Sammy, out here at Little House on the Prairie, chores begin at sunup," Dean says in his best mockery of a _gather round the campfire_ tone. Dean pauses, waiting for a retort, and then slips back into his normal voice when he doesn't get one. "Nah, Bobby wakes up early, says old men don't need much sleep, and I decided to just get up when I heard him puttering around."

Dean does sound better, maybe resting easier about something. Knowing him, it could just be the knowledge that his little brother's got a sure thing lined up. Still, an early morning call has never boded well for either of them, and he has to make sure, no matter how much mockery he's letting himself in for. "Are you good?"

"Yeah, are you?" 

"Yeah. Sarah's been great, and there's some winter carnival she wants to go to next week - wait, I'm going to miss your birthday, aren't I?"

"Don't worry about it," Dean says easily. "I'm okay out here." 

The reassurance comes too quickly, and Sam swallows down the hurt. "Are you saying you'd rather be with Bobby than with me?"

"Let's see, on the one hand we've got a guy who makes the best coffee I've ever had in my life, even if he refuses to bake a goddamn pie every once in a while" - Dean's voice rises on that like he's making sure Bobby can hear every word coming out of his smart mouth - "and on the other, we've got a drama queen who's been given a second shot at a great girl and would probably whine like an overgrown, pesky baby at the thought of leaving her again." Just when Sam's sure Dean's about to say _you do the math_ , Dean veers in a different direction. "Course, one of those two is my baby brother, who owes me birthday cake out the wazoo, so no, Sammy, I'm not saying I'd rather be with Bobby than with you, and only an idiot would think that's what I meant."

Sam grins into the phone. "Yes, your life is so tough, Dean, having to deal with a brother of limited intelligence."

"Dude, you have no idea," Dean says, deadpan. "And have fun out there."

*

"My mom used to take me ice skating every day while the rink was open," Sarah says, steam from her hot apple cider rising and veiling her face, painted bright pink from the cold.

"I don't know how to skate, Sarah," Sam says for approximately the hundredth time. He shies away from further explanations, and really, Sarah's much too smart not to have figured out that any activity that required expensive equipment was not one he would ever have been able to participate in. His conscience is only slightly stricken when he wishes that the skate rental counter will have no skates large enough for his feet; unfortunately, they can fit him out, no problem.

Sarah's got her monogrammed white skates on and she's acting like it's perfectly natural to walk on two thin blades rather than nice safe human feet; she kneels on the weird turfy stuff that lines the rink and does up his battered black skates with swift, sharp movements, locking his ankles firmly into place. Sam looks down at the top of her head, the fuzzy white of her earwarmer headband standing out distinctly against the soft dark fall of her hair. She stands up, straight and sure, not even wobbling a little, and holds her hand out to him.

There are a few good memories of ice - forts and homemade sno-cones and icicle spears - locked inside his memory, but there are other ones as well: treacherous black ice sending the Impala spinning beneath his hands; Dad tracking something nasty out onto a patch of thin ice, falling through and cracking his head as he went down; Dean putting him into a bathtub full of sharp little cubes, making him go still and helpless against the green and purple monsters he was battling in his mind. But Sarah's gloved hand is warm in his, and there are little kids out there, twirling giddily, so how bad can this really be?

"Sam," Sarah says, her hand still in his, guiding him like it's no effort at all, even though her legs are pumping confidently while he's got his knees locked, terrified that the slightest movement on his part will spill him to the ground and maybe drag her down with him. He tries to concentrate on what she's saying, trusting that she will keep him upright. "Can we talk about what you said last night?"

He doesn't want to nod, to do anything other than go where she leads him, but before he can answer, she lets go of his hand to keep them from ramming into a little girl who's practicing a really complicated-looking spin, oblivious to everything but the music pounding into her skull from her earphones. In that instant, he goes down hard. _Nice move, Sammy; very double-oh seven_ the voice in his head that sounds like Dean pipes up. Sarah's giggling when she glides over to help him to his feet, but the fall has shaken him, made it impossible for him to be the sidecar to her motorcycle, and it turns out that fall was just the beginning.

His ass is one massive purple bruise not twenty minutes later, and his ankles have twisted underneath him in every direction possible, so he lets Sarah pull him over to the opening in the wall. He limps over to the nearest bench, wishing his fingers would regain some feeling so that he can take these damn instruments of torture off his feet.

Sarah hisses sympathetically when she unlaces his skates, noting the swell of his ankles and the red marks on his skin from where the skates bit too sharply into his flesh. "Sorry about this," she says ruefully, looking up apologetically at him. "I just thought, if _I_ can do it, anyone can do it . . ." she trails off. "I'm not making this any better, am I? Let's go home and I'll pamper you."

*

Sarah's tied up on a phone call with the curator at the Dorsky, the art museum she'd promised a painting to, and the questions she asked about Dean's deal while driving home have gotten Sam itchy, made him imagine that the jagged scar at the base of his spine was starting to tingle. He should check in with Dean anyway, see if there's anything Dean wants for his birthday that he could only get from around here. Not that he can think of anything New Paltz is notable for.

He presses 1 on his speed dial and waits for Dean's sarcastic greeting. But the phone rings a dozen times, then a dozen more, and he finally hears the message Dean had recorded in the car as Sam was driving them through Kansas with no intention of stopping once in the entire state. "Hey, this is Dean. I'll call you back if you leave me a number that actually works."

There's no point leaving Dean a message about Sarah's questions; Sam knows better than to give Dean that kind of ammunition. All he says is, "Call me when you get a chance. Just not at the crack of dawn, alright?" He clicks the phone shut and it lies heavily in his hand. He gets up and heads to the living room, where Sarah's huddled under a blanket, notes on her lap, still on the phone. There's a fireplace in the room, and he hauls in a few of the applewood logs stacked in the mud room and lights the fire, sitting back on his heels and listening to the crackle until he can't hear Sarah's voice anymore.

Sitting hunched up with his arms around his drawn-up legs, Sam watches the colors the applewood lends to the fire, hazy green dancing among the bright peach and orange and yellow. He's startled when Sarah comes up and wraps her arms around him from behind, pulling him back between her legs. Her cheek rests on his hair, and he can feel her heart racing a mile a minute. "Sam," she whispers, dragging her blanket around to cover his legs, "can we talk?"

"Sarah," he begins, then stops again. He starts to turn around, but then remembers that while he's reading her face for clues as to what she wants to hear, she'll surely be doing the same, evaluating his honesty with probing looks at his face, his eyes, and his body language. "Yes, I was dead, actually dead, literally dead. For three days." Dean still won't speak about those lost hours, and Sam hasn't pushed on that one boundary, leaving it sacrosanct. He won't talk about what Dean must have gone through, not even for Sarah, cradling him in her arms. This time he does twist. and catches a glimpse of her face; her eyes are closed but there are tears leaking out from beneath her eyelids; there's a pained frown twisting her features. He reaches out for her.

"And where did you go?" she asks, surprising him so much that his hand stills between them.

That's the question that Dean wouldn't ask him, assuming a knowledge that was sacred, private, and not to be trampled upon even by one so very near. Sam had never worked up the courage to admit that he hadn't gone anywhere at all, that he could remember being in Cold Oak, could clearly recall setting down the knife and bargaining with Jake for peace, and then there was cold and dark sweeping over him like velvet curtains coming down, thick and soft and heavy, and then suddenly there was warmth again, Dean's insistent arms around him and frantic heartbeat surrounding him while his nose got lost in Dean's dirty hair. Clarity came later, seeing Dean in bright pieces and shadowed fragments that suddenly resolved into a whole as light invaded his unaccustomed eyes.

He's never remembered the moment so vividly before, and he wants to hug it to himself, keep it inside. But Sarah's asking for comfort only he can give, and he recalls that she'd spoken about her mother's death when he had first met her. He does the only thing he can think to do. He lies.

"There was light. Everything was white and clean and . . . calm. And I wasn't scared or hurt. Just peaceful."

She's nodding, her eyes still closed, pressed tightly shut to trap her tears, and the arms she's wound around him loosen. He pivots and reverses their positions, holding her in his own arms and saying _shhh_ into her soft hair, rocking her while she cries, exhausting herself.

He puts her to bed, then steals back downstairs. There's a part of him that wants to hunt out a blank pad, make it serve as a makeshift journal, and write down everything that's just come back to him. But no words will ever get it exactly right, and the five-year planner is for the future, not the past, and so he settles in front of the TV, flipping through channels.

His phone rings a few times, the ordinary ring only, so he ignores it. When the credits roll on _The Return of the King_ , he tries Dean again, only to get the same message as before, this time immediately instead of after several rings. "Dean, charge your goddamn phone once in a while," he mutters, and gets ready for bed.

*

He wakes up to the sound of his phone's voicemail notification. He's got half a dozen messages, all from the same number, starting with a 605 area code. That's got to be Bobby. Dean has probably been bugging him since he set foot in his house to extend the olive branch, but just because Bobby caved doesn't mean Sam has to forgive him.

Sam calls Dean's cell again, but only gets his voicemail. "Listen, Dean, call me back yourself and don't make Bobby do it for you," he says. "I mean it. You're not going to outlast me on this one."

His call waiting beeps as he's finishing his message, and he clicks over. "Sam?" he hears, and registers it as Bobby's voice, rougher than he's ever heard it. "Dean's missing."

*

Sam clicks his cell phone shut and stumbles on his way across the room - why do the rooms in this house have to be so goddamn big anyway? - to pick up the phone sitting on the glass and brass bedside table. He flips his cell back open to locate Bobby's number in the "received calls" guide and calls back on the house line.

"What the hell was that?" Bobby bites out, not bothering with any words of greeting.

"Have to keep the line to the cell open," Sam explains, fumbling the words, and hears Bobby's anger being expelled in a long sigh. "Where's Dean?" Even to his own ears, he sounds petulant and frightened, like a child unconvincingly denying that he's afraid to sleep on his own in the dark.

"He went on a hunt -"

"Jesus, Bobby!" Sam is seething like a pot boiling over, so angry he wants to reach through the phone and throttle the man. "He came to you because he needed to get some rest, needed a break, and you sent him after -"

"He came to me because he needed a break from you!" Bobby shouts right back, then clams up. 

"That's not . . . that's not true." 

He tries to think back, to the West Virginia case, but Bobby is relentless, keeps on dropping words that insinuate themselves in Sam's brain. "Said he was tired, said he needed something to make it stop," Bobby continues, and Sam remembers just how long it had been since he'd seen Dean without any lines of pain on his face, or looking well-rested and one hundred percent healthy. That nearly depleted bottle of Advil rises up before his mind's eye.

"Do you know?" He has to clear his throat; he hopes Bobby won't make him beg for it. "What's wrong with my brother?" _Too many things to name_ he remembers Dean joking.

Bobby's silent for a good long while. "Bobby?" Sam prods sharply.

"He went after some fae that've sorta settled nearby," Bobby finally says. "We read up on all the lore before he went, and he took every precaution. Had a cold iron knife in his pocket, carried herbs and bread. He took a self-bored stone too."

"And what? You just sent him off like that?" Dean never took adequate precautions when he didn't have someone to watch out for. "Couldn't even be bothered to go with him?"

Bobby's just flat-out ignoring him now, simply reciting the necessary information instead of responding; that's a trick John Winchester never thought to pull, and Sam flounders, unsure how to retaliate. "The fae must have gotten him somehow in spite of everything. Must have taken him somewhere."

Tired of Bobby's vagueness, Sam snaps, "Figure it out! You're the one with a million and one books!"

"Have you been hearing a word I've been saying? Dean did everything right according to my books. This is a different kind of fae, different rules; if I knew any other way of getting Dean back, I'da done it already."

_Then what the fuck good are you?_ Sam wants to scream. If Bobby's whole library had nothing on the rules for the type of fae that took Dean, where the hell is he supposed to find anything that will work?

"You hearing me?" Bobby growls.

He schools himself to be calm, cool, as unlike Bobby as he can be. "I heard you. What I didn't hear was an explanation for what you think was wrong with Dean in the first place, or why you let him go if he seemed so hurt."

Bobby's tone is pure ice. "What's wrong with Dean is what you did to him with your goddamned spell. You thought you could cheat the devil, get away scot-free? Maybe _you_ did, Sam, but your brother didn't." Sam hears the click of the phone being hung up and realizes it sounds like a shotgun being cocked.

*

Think, he has to think. What does he know about fae? He's never gone up against them, but he remembers hearing something about them once, some hunter facing them and winding up as a draw. Not Dad, he doesn't think; surely not Dean. Pastor Jim, maybe? But he's dead too, and he never kept a journal, not like Dad did; Pastor Jim believed in personal communication, talking things through, and the value of the teacher-student relationship. Sam had once sat at his feet, happily ensconced in reams of Latin, one eye always on Dean, who'd made the lessons more interesting for himself by composing dirty limericks in the dead language or translating the lyrics to songs that would have made the Romans - except maybe the really decadent emperors - roll over in their graves.

It always comes back to Dean, who'd spent years following Dad, one step over and one behind, being treated like he was just tagging along, when really he was providing that human touch that Dad didn't have time to bother with. And Dean had stayed, had cultivated those relationships on his own when Dad and Sam had both taken off for greener pastures.

Except for Missouri. That's who he can call. His fingers shake with triumph as he finds the number in his phone and dials. There's a click when she picks up on her end and the call is connected.

"Hello?" she says cautiously, and he falters. She's never answered like that. Usually, it's more along the lines of "Sam! I'm glad to hear from you, sugar!" or "Dean, baby, you better call more than once a year if you want my help," and on one memorable occasion, it had been, "Samuel Winchester, you apologize to your brother right now or I'ma hand my whackin' spoon over to him real soon."

"Hello?" she tries again. "Sam? Dean?"

"Missouri," he says in a rush, butchering the syllables of her name, and she chuckles.

"There you are, baby. You boys doing okay?"

He's clutching Sarah's imitation antique phone with a sweaty hand. "Why didn't you know it was me? Why did you think it was Dean?"

She sounds taken aback, a little muddled, like she can't quite remember what just happened. "I don't know. I can mostly see you boys clear . . ." she trails off.

"Missouri -"

"I see him." She sounds like she's surprised even herself.

"Dean? You can see Dean? Where is he?"

"Just now, when you said my name again, I got a sense of you. And kind of . . . an echo, maybe? An echo of Dean."

His stomach is turning itself inside out. "Just an echo?" If the fae really have Dean, he could be trapped in some weird parallel world, a place where time and space operate with different constraints; he could be right next to Dean, pretty much pressed up against him, and not be able to touch him, not even know that they had gotten so close. Maybe what she's sensing is being transmitted from that other world.

"What . . . what do you see?"

"There's nothing to see, baby. He's asleep; he's resting."

Sam barely chokes down a laugh; Dean had been so tired, so worn out - of course he's resting now. "Sam," Missouri says, "I don't mean to make light of this, but I want you to know that from what I can tell, nothing's hurting him right now. I don't know where he is, but he's just being quiet."

Quiet and lost, because Dean is a big believer in going the stupidly stoic route, never complaining himself but insisting on knowing every time Sam trips on an untied shoelace or cuts himself shaving. Quiet and sleeping, because Sam had fucked him up when he'd broken that damn crossroads deal.

*

His head is swimming, and he lets it fall into his hands while he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to remember the number of Dean's latest cell phone. It's just not coming to him, and he has to admit that Dean's lecture about modern technology's destruction of memory - a lecture he was at least forty years too young to deliver with a straight face - was right on the money. All his life, Dean's been available just by pressing a button on his speed-dial; he gives up and checks his cell, then dials it from Sarah's chunky white phone. It doesn't even ring anymore; all he hears is that high-pitched, three-tone sequence and then a message saying that that number is no longer in service.

Who knows how time is passing for Dean, asleep in the land of the fae, if he can even feel time slipping away drop by drop or all in a rush. Even if it's only in dreams, Sam hopes that Dean hears with every heartbeat the insistent rhythm of his apology, the words that will choke him until he sees his brother again.

*

The best thing to do is to get out to South Dakota, find Dean himself, even if it means kicking over every stone and plucking every blade of grass in the whole fucking state. He just needs to get there . . . shit. All he's got is some clothes, a fake credit card, one knife, and two guns. All of the other weapons, the stuff he needs for any rituals - books, herbs, and symbols - everything else is with Dean, either on him or stashed somewhere in Bobby's house or locked in the trunk of the car. He can maybe catch a flight out there, but there's nowhere around here to stock back up on weapons, and he can't fly with them in any case. There's no one trustworthy who could sell him gear out there, either. It'll take time to find a car cheap enough to buy but good enough to get him three-quarters of the way across the country, and even more time to actually make the drive.

There's got to be a smarter way to go about this.

Had Bobby said he was going to keep looking? Can he trust Bobby to do whatever it takes to help Dean? He can, right? It's not Dean who Bobby's mad at; hell, they'd both yelled at him for trying spell-work years beyond what he should have been able to manage. He'd had to drug both of them just to shut them up, pacify them so that Bobby didn't see which books Sam was studying or notice him dragging Dean's supine form into the passenger seat and slamming on the gas. Dean had been on Bobby's side when Bobby had drawn that ridiculous line in the sand and said he wasn't going to do a damn thing more to save Dean's life and get him out of the deal.

But after Sam had saved his brother, Bobby had had no bone to pick with Dean, had welcomed him back with open arms, apparently, if the frequency of their phone calls and Dean's visits was anything to go by. So maybe Bobby won't think of this as helping him, but as saving Dean, and will do what he can. Sam can only hope.

*

His thumb hovers over the send button while he debates whether calling Rick is a good idea. Even if he can somehow get out to Ohio to swing by Rick's store, he's got no guarantees that Rick carries what he needs. And he doesn't have cash, and while Rick might possibly let that slide for Dean, there's pretty much no chance he'll do it for the brother who always went to the OU library rather than sticking with Dean on the wrong side of the tracks in Athens. He pushes the button before he can think himself out of this.

"This is Rick."

"This is Sam Winchester - Dean's, Dean Winchester's brother." He can't remember if Rick knew Dad, if he should bring up Dad's name.

There's only silence coming from the other end, and he wonders if they got cut off somehow. "Hello?"

"I'm here." Rick's voice is calm and unwelcoming.

"I'm looking for Dean -"

"Last time I saw him was about a week ago."

"You saw him?" How many people had Dean stopped in to see on his farewell tour? What the hell was going on?

"That's what I said," Rick says, clipped, like he's taking offense at Sam's disbelief, like his word is unimpeachable. "He came by, said he was driving through the area, thought he should stock up while he had the cash and the time."

Okay, he can work with this. Any information is good information. "What'd he buy?"

There's another long pause, like Rick is trying to figure out if he's trustworthy. Just before Sam's about to say something about knowing Dean wouldn't like his little brother being jerked around, Rick says, "Nothing unusual. Ammo, couple bow strings, a nice tight knife. Same kind of thing he used to have on regular order, just like your dad." 

"Did you notice anything unusual while he was there?"

"I don't like being interrogated," Rick says tightly. "But if it'll get you off my line, I'll tell you what you want to know. He came by. He looked like shit. I told him so, he laughed, and said to hurry up and ring him up because he had a nice warm bed waiting for him only a couple of states away."

Sam ignores the warning. "And that's it? He didn't mention anything about hunting fae? Because that's what he was doing when he went missing, and I need whatever weapons I can find that'll be good for that -"

"I'm not interested in what you need. From what I hear, you'll mess with anything, consequences be damned, let someone else clean up the mess you made."

God damn Bobby Singer. "If you heard that from Bobby -"

"I heard it from a lot of people, good people who know where hunters aren't supposed to go. I'm not going to be the one to hand you a loaded gun when you don't even care what you're aiming at."

"But it's for Dean, to save Dean -" he gets out before Rick interrupts him one last time.

"There's always some way to rationalize doing what you want, isn't there?" Rick says just before he hangs up.

*

Everyone he talks to goes through the same song and dance - sorry about Dean, fuck you anyway. Who died and made Bobby God is beyond Sam, but he's shaking with rage when he finally thinks of someone Bobby might not have gotten his claws into. Gutierrez - Sam can't remember the guy's first name - the guy who sold Gordon Walker all the bright shiny knives he'd used to hunt vampires and some guns too, just to be on the safe side. Gutierrez was a slime, but not one with enough of a spine to stand up to anyone. It'll be best to go see him in person, rather than call and let Gutierrez hang up on him, and in any case, he's more likely to find everything he needs in New York City.

Sam hammers on Sarah's door, and when she opens it, he can hear the sound of Joni Mitchell's croon coming from the iPod sitting in its sleek white dock. "Sam? What's wrong?"

"Dean's gone missing. I need to find him."

"Oh my God, Sam -"

There's no time to listen to anything but concrete plans. "I need to get to New York, and I need cash."

Sarah snaps to and straightens her spine. "Yes. I can do that." She goes to her dressing room and pulls out a jacket and a pair of sneakers. "I'll drive you. It'll be quicker than taking the bus."

His stomach growls, angry at having been ignored for so many hours. "I'm going to get my stuff together."

"Go. I'll figure out the food situation." Sarah sends him off while pulling her hair into a tight ponytail, then jogs down the stairs.

Ten minutes later, they're in Sarah's white Mercedes convertible, and Sam's got a large supreme pizza on his lap, hot enough to burn his thighs through layers of cardboard and denim. Sarah zips down Interstate 87 and says not a word.

*

Sam doesn't want anyone connecting Sarah with him and making trouble for her somewhere down the road, and anyway he needs some time to himself, just to think about how he's going to pull this off, so he gets out of the car and swings his duffel high on his shoulder while they're stopped at a light near the Metropolitan Museum. He remembers Jess promising him that they'd go there one day, but now he's glad they never made it, because California belonged to Jess, but New York seems like it's Sarah's, and his head is all jumbled up from everything that's happened.

He gets out of the car and just nods at Sarah, who stares back and then pulls away when the light turns green, something sad and resigned in her eyes.

*

Sarah had tucked a fat wad of cash in the side pocket of his duffel bag, and he ducks into a convenient alcove to distribute it so that it will stay with him even if his bag doesn't. There's a bitter wind knifing through his clothes, freezing his gloveless hands and making the bills flutter dangerously, but on the plus side, no one is interested in hanging around to see how much he's got or even to glance sideways at him as they march along the sidewalk, faces staring straight down to make headway against the wind.

He walks until he finds the lit globes that stand above the subway stations, guarding the entrances, and heads down into the muggy warmth of the station. The plastic covering the route map is stained and covered in graffiti, but the YOU ARE HERE symbol still shows up brightly against the multicolored paper, and he traces the route he'll need with careful fingers, unconcerned about what he must look like to the homeless man sitting on one of the wooden benches just inside the turnstiles. He buys an unlimited ride pass with Jeff Bentley's MasterCard and swipes it to let himself through the middle turnstile.

Standing on the platform, he takes stock of what he's got and what he'll need. Gloves, definitely, a scarf maybe. He can get away without a warmer coat since he wears so many layers anyway. A hat is a must, if only because he can imagine Dean's taunts about looking like the world's tallest five-year-old, and he hasn't heard Dean's voice, even in his head, for way too long.

The train comes thundering down the track, heralded by a blast of frigid air; he's standing inside the yellow line, much too close, and the rush of the train as it roars its way past him makes his heart skip and his stomach drop. He wonders if that's how the Impala makes Dean feel, if that's what Dean's awed, delighted smiles meant every time he shared one across the broad front seat. He muscles himself into the train car just before the doors slide shut.

*

It's coming back to him more quickly than he'd counted on, the navigation of the New York streets not a problem. Once his feet hit the sidewalk of the right block, he just knows, even though there's construction going on at the corner, scaffolding and temporary sidewalks creating new patterns that invalidate the ones in his memory. Still, the buildings look pretty much the same, cheap little mini-marts and delis, nail salons and Chinese take-out places. There's even the same miserable looking chocolate-colored mutt tied up outside one of the convenience stores that had been there a few years ago, and he shakes his head at the kind of asshole who'd leave a dog outside in the middle of a New York January; figures it would be one of Gutierrez's friends or neighbors.

There's no proper sign for Gutierrez's store, not one that states its business outright anyway, but there's a paper taped up in the front window saying "A. Gutierrez, Proprietor." He remembers that from a couple of years ago too.

The bell dings loud and cheerful when Sam pushes the door open, and Gutierrez comes out from the back of the store with a wide smile that vanishes when he sees who it is. The guy's eyes get impossibly big. "No! I . . . I gave it up, man! Went straight after you guys came by, okay?"

This might even be a little fun. Sam leans his forearms against the glass of the biggest display case - nearly barren, just a few cheap knives with the Virgin Mary picked out in bright enamel and paint on the handles spread artfully across some draped velvet - and nods thoughtfully. "You went straight, huh? Thought you said back then that you hadn't been doing anything wrong."

"I didn't do nothing, man." Gutierrez is already sweating, and his skin has a sick-looking yellow tint. "Ever since you and your brother came by, I stopped selling . . . special equipment." He gestures at the empty display cases.

Only Gordon had ever really dealt with Gutierrez, but from what Sam remembered about Gordon, Gutierrez's stuff must have been good as well as cheap and easily obtained. "Come on, you don't have anything in the back?" he wheedles, pretending he doesn't see the fear come rushing back to the man's face, replacing the expression of false innocence he'd pasted on. "Not even for an old friend?" Sam drops his voice to a whisper. "An old friend willing to pay cash?"

Now it's just a matter of playing Gutierrez's greed against his fear. "For - for you, maybe, I could see if I still have something. From my private collection."

But most hunters were monogamous, specializing in one kind of evil, and everything Gutierrez has, Sam realizes, would be good against a vampire; he has no idea what he needs to go up against the fae. "A knife would be good," he finally says, watching Gutierrez nearly deflate with relief, "but some information would be better."

"What do you need?"

"Fae. What do I need to hunt them?"

Gutierrez relaxes all the way, at last telling the whole truth. "That I can't help you with. I don't carry those things."

"Give me a name," Sam demands.

"There is no one who sells what you want," Gutierrez says with calm finality. "Fighting the fae is not like hunting anything else; it's not weapons you need."

"I still need a name." An expert, if there aren't any sellers.

"There's a bar, down in Hell's Kitchen. Mary Kelly's. Word is, the bartender there knows all kinds of things. Joe Connor."

_Joke on her_ Sam hears before it resolves into a name. Joe Connor, who works in a bar named for one of the most famous murder victims in the world. That sounds about right.

*

On the map, the distance between Gutierrez's place and Hell's Kitchen didn't look all that big, but Sam had forgotten, had failed to take into account the way New York threw up resistance against tourists. The sidewalks are cracked and bumpy, littered with garbage and full of natives, people who walk briskly and confidently as they talk on their cell phones and make plans on how to spend the rest of the night. There's no point in saying "excuse me" every time he bumps into someone; they wouldn't hear him in the first place and they'd just look at him like he's crazy if they did, because jockeying for position is a way of life, the only way to get by here.

Harlem melts away around him and he starts taking notice of the storefronts and signs that are being illuminated as the daylight fades. It seems like every third sign is for a Sammy something - "Sammy's Deli," "Sammy's Nails," "Sammy's Famous Salon" - and Dean materializes out of nothing but memory, clear as day in front of him, wearing that infuriating and comfortingly familiar smirk, thumping his chest and flicking his fingers out in a peace sign to mimic the infamous Sammy Sosa salute. Dean loved to run his jokes into the ground, and that one had stopped being amusing maybe the third time he did it - or at least it would have stopped being amusing had Dean not expressed such genuine glee every damn time.

Manhattan's only eight miles long; he remembers hearing that somewhere, and it feels true because his legs are eating up the sidewalk, and before he even has time to think about what he can offer Joe Connor, if Connor has something useful for him, he's smack dab in the middle of Hell's Kitchen, making his way through lines of people hanging out and waiting to be seated at the restaurants that haven't got liquor licenses, their breath curling into the air as they shuffle and stamp their feet in an effort to stay warm.

He cuts through the lines, ignoring all the "hey, buddy"s and the "watch it, asshole"s he's offered, checking the street signs at every corner to make sure that he hasn't gotten turned around somehow; it's been so long since he's walked in a proper city, a place with homeless people curled up in every spare corner while the streets are jammed with taxicabs and limousines. A white stone building catches his eye, standing out from its red brick neighbors, and a sign informs him that he's found the Columbus Branch of the New York Public Library. If he hadn't slowed down to read the placard, he would have missed Mary Kelly's, two doors down and not doing a lick of advertising.

He has to jiggle the doorknob just to get in, but the warmth inside feels fabulous against his cold, stiff face, and he hastens to seal the door shut behind him. There's a loud chorus of groans coming from the corner, and he looks over, ready to apologize for letting cold air in, when he realizes the men huddled there are exclaiming over a hand of poker - Texas Hold 'Em - and could not care less about what he's doing. There's one seat open, right in the middle, and a beer holding the missing guy's place; it doesn't look like an invitation, so he moves on.

The bar top is wide and shining, and behind it is a girl who looks so supremely disconnected from the world, from the bar, from the card players in the corner and the scattered drinkers lifting mugs of foamy beer and plain shot glasses to their lips, that Sam wonders if she can possibly be for real. She must be living on tips; she has to smile to make a couple bucks. She's not cleaning glasses or wiping down the bar or doing much of anything when he approaches; she just looks at him with a flat gaze. Closer up, Sam can see, even in the cozy, dim yellow light of the bar, her long dark hair, caught up in a ponytail, is a shining navy blue, and there are navy blue lines fanning out from her watchful dark eyes like tattooed crow's feet laid over her clear brown skin. The effect is vaguely tribal, but everything about her discourages any kind of personal comment, so he just walks directly up to her, slings his heavy bag off his aching shoulder, and states his business. "I'm looking for a guy named Joe Connor," he says, keeping his voice pitched low enough that only someone bent on eavesdropping could overhear him.

"Are you." 

"Yeah. So does he work here? Is he around?"

She turns away to serve one of the customers who's come to the bar, and for a second he suspects her of drawing the guy up there just to have an excuse not to answer him. But she pours another shot and fills a fresh beer glass without even asking what the guy wants, so Sam figures the guy's a regular. She moves back to face Sam dead on when she's done, but before he can repeat himself, there's an uproar from the corner where the card players are gathered. The empty seat's been filled by a big hulk of a guy, who must have won that round, given that the others are pushing their money toward him with rueful grins tinged with admiration. 

The bartender steps out from behind the bar to bring the card players another pitcher, and from this new angle, Sam can see that her body is chunkier than her face had indicated, a little bottom-heavy, and she's wearing heavy, scuffed boots that look like she's spent her entire life in them; Dean would love this girl. Just the thought of his brother gets him twitching again, and he catches her arm, soft under his fingers, as she heads back to the bar with a tray bearing the empty pitcher. 

"I said I'm looking for Joe Connor," he repeats, voice a little louder this time, and the guys in the corner stop their card game to look up at him speculatively.

A light, familiar voice speaks up behind him. "Well, then, this must be your lucky day, Sam, because you found me." He spins, and there behind the counter is Jo Harvelle, face flushed and her dark lipstick looking a little smudged. Her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes, and he catches sight of a ring on her left hand when she raises it and runs it through her hair. "What do you want?"

*

When he'd been on the rampage, Meg inside him filling every crevice in his soul with her poison, and scented Jo on the air and headed for Duluth, he'd found her so intoxicating. The fear in her eyes as he loomed over her had been unspeakably delicious; the way she'd gotten herself so tangled in Dean that she couldn't see that he wasn't Sam just made everything easier. He'd thought the lust that had spiked through him belonged to Meg, and had done his best to push aside every whisper of how vulnerable she looked, how beautiful blood and bruises were on her milk-white skin.

So apparently he had been wrong.

Because he can feel himself reacting to her like he's never seen anything more beautiful, even while he's thinking to himself that this is Dean's girl, despite knowing that Dean never once touched her except with friendly hands, a fellow hunter's watchful gaze. She's wearing what looks like the vest of a man's three-piece suit over a pair of tight, dark jeans. Below the sharply cut silver vest there seems to be nothing but white and pink flesh; her chest is small enough to let her get away with that, with being a tease in a way that would never occur to someone used to getting what she wanted. He wonders what her skin smells like.

She looks older, more carefully put together, the dash of color on her mouth not a little girl's attempt at dress-up but a declaration of independence. She shifts her weight impatiently, and one long, pale curl slips from back to front to rest, coiled, on her collarbone. Jo's grown up, evidently, and she's not going to make the same mistake twice. Asking questions indicates weakness, and she won't bend enough to inquire after Dean.

"Jo," he finally says, when he realizes waiting her out is only ratcheting up her impatience. "I really need -"

He cuts himself off when her eyes narrow dangerously at the word. "I'm fine, Sam, thanks for asking," she bites out.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, but presses ahead, betting that the remorse he's putting on, added to the fact of Dean's absence, will get her to give in and ask how she can help. "I just - I didn't . . ."

She cuts him off right quick. "You didn't realize we all had lives, that we weren't all waiting around for you to show up? That helping you is not actually the highlight of our existence?"

If she wants to play it like that, he can be just as nasty. "Who's 'we'? Last I heard, you still weren't on speaking terms with your mother." Not like he's in a position to be lecturing anyone on filial devotion, especially with information a few years old, but then again, she'd never seen him and Dad in the same room; she's used to having Dean to filter him through too.

Quick as a flash, he's soaked, his hair matting under the weight of the holy water she's thrown on him. There's a cheer from some of the regulars, and he realizes they must have gotten pretty loud.

Her dark eyes go confused and wary when they register that there's no smoke pouring out of him. He draws his sleeve across his bangs to keep any more water from dripping in his eyes. "Now that we've got the preliminaries out of the way, you got some place we could talk in private?" he asks. He can't catch the towel she throws at him, but he picks it up off the floor, scrubs at his hair, and follows her swishing hips to a door at the back of the bar.

There's no room behind the door Jo swings open, just two staircases, a spiral one that ascends to the second floor, and a wide, well-worn straight one that tracks a path to the basement storage. She hesitates for a moment, evidently choosing the direction in which to take him, and turns to look back at the bar; he wasn't expecting the move and ends up with her pretty much in his arms. What she smells like is roses, with some other fragrance that doesn't quite blend on top - something musky, smoky the way bars used to smell when he was growing up in them.

She chooses to lead him up. The apartment above the bar is airy and would be bright in the daytime, large windows taking up a good percentage of the wall space and sucking out nearly all of the heat in the place. It's a railroad-style apartment, the kind he remembers living in when they hit Iowa the year he turned eleven, one room leading into another in an unbroken chain. He tosses the towel onto the bathroom floor as they pass it and merely dumps his duffel bag when she points to a chair in what must pass for a living room; he can see a gleaming brass bed through the doorway, shielded by the half-closed door and with pillows and sheets and blankets heaped up in disorderly mounds.

The apartment itself smells like her perfume or lotion, that rose scent again, and this time when he looks around, he sees the knickknacks, the photographs that make this place her home. "Sit," she says, raising her eyebrows in challenge, and he meets her eyes deliberately, letting her know that he's figured out she isn't prompted by hospitality. 

"Because there's a devil's trap painted underneath this fake Oriental rug and you want to make doubly sure?"

She smiles, revealing large teeth. "Do it."

He sits and makes a big production of squirming around on the couch to get comfortable; he drapes his arms across the back of the sofa and puts his feet up on the battered trunk that doubles as a coffee table. She waits, uncrossing her arms and keeping her hands in loose fists, ready to snatch up a weapon or two, watching him closely. When he fishes out the throw pillow that's bunched up uncomfortably against his spine and tosses it to the other end of the couch, he can see the devil's trap embroidered on one side of the pillow's cotton cover.

He grins up at her but she doesn't relax. "Not a demon, check," she says tartly. "There's a whole lot of other things you could be. What's my middle name?"

"Is that something you really think I would know?" he scoffs. "I didn't even know you'd gotten married. Where is he, anyway?"

"He's dead," Jo says, straight to the point. That at least hasn't changed, and that's the one thing that he'd always thought would pull Dean toward her. He doesn't hear pain in her voice, let alone the kind of _can I actually get it together enough to breathe?_ agony he'd felt when he'd fought Dean's protective arms as he watched Jess go up in flames. Jo is just matter-of-fact, like being a widow is as easy as being a wife, and that rubs him the wrong way.

"So you're all alone, still on the lookout for hunts, and working in a bar. Wow. Time flies."

"Real nice. You _must_ be Sam; no one else thinks it's cute to be such a bitch." She turns away, heading back to the kitchen to fish a bottle of Sprite out of the fridge. She pops the top off and her ring flashes. It's large, extending from knuckle to knuckle, but thin, filigree letting flesh peek through the silver. For however long she's been a widow, she's still wearing her husband's ring, and he feels like a shithead.

"I'm sorry," he says, meaning it. She nods, shrugs it off like it's no big deal, and he remembers that too, the way she'd pretend to dismiss what had hurt her, trying so hard to mimic a hunter's shell. "Can I get one too?" he asks, pointing at her soda.

"Yeah." She waits for him to come back to the couch and finally sits down next to him. Her eyes are fixed on something behind him, and he swivels to find a wedding portrait, Jo in a pretty white dress, no frills or lace, smiling out at the camera like she'd never known heartache, and her husband - a broad-shouldered guy with short blond hair - smiling down at her. When he turns back, her eyes are on him. "That's Sean," she says quietly, rolling her bottle of soda between her palms, letting it click against her ring on each pass.

"What happened?"

Her gaze drifts back up to the photograph. "He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He'd gone over to the bank to deposit the cash the bar had made that week and there was a robbery going on." She doesn't say a word about him dying a hero; from the way she's looking at his picture, it's clear she doesn't need to. "That's what happened. What happened to you?"

He fixes his eyes on the lipstick stain around the mouth of her bottle, keeping her hands - now more of a giveaway with her than her face - in his line of sight. If she really hasn't talked to Ellen since she ran off before they killed the Yellow-Eyed Demon, then she won't have heard about Dean's deal, the way he broke it and saved his big brother, or his _persona non grata_ status within the splintered hunting community. The best thing to do is to make an appeal. "It's Dean. He disappeared hunting some weird fae, some kind of offshoot nobody has any solid information about."

Sure enough, one of her hands tightens around the bottle. The fingers of the other drum briefly against her knee. "Fae." Her voice has gone flat and untrusting again. "And you came to me."

"I got the name 'Joe Connor' mentioned as someone who knew about all kinds of supernatural things. I had no idea that was you, Jo. And I still have no clue why fae in particular are getting you upset."

She gets to her feet and sets down her bottle in one smooth movement. "It's not me you want to talk to, if you're dealing with fae. It's Rob." He twists to watch her make her way over to the front door; she throws it open and there's a guy standing right there, shamelessly eavesdropping. "Sam, this is Rob."

Jo looks inquisitively at Rob, who nods back at her, and they're having a silent conversation made up entirely of gestures; Sam thinks that at least when he and Dean do this, it's not so painfully obvious, and he waits to see what the upshot of all of this pantomiming will be.   
He gets his answer soon enough. "I need to go back down; I shouldn't have left June to deal with the bar alone for this long," Jo says, squeezes past Rob - blocking most of the doorway, one forearm resting lightly against the jamb - and trips lightly down the stairs. 

Sam gets to his feet and watches Rob drop his arm and move nonchalantly into the apartment. The guy is actually taller than he is, and thick with muscle all the way down; for the first time since Dean's stupid plan got them thrown into different cells at the Green River County Detention Center, he's facing down a guy who makes him feel small. But he's already coming to this guy as a supplicant - no way he's going to do it while looking confused or frightened. He raises his head and meets Rob's gaze straight on, taking careful stock of the man in front of him, trying to decide if Jo's word is enough to trust him. 

Rob's got black hair, slicked straight back from a long, pale face. There's something unnerving about him, even beyond the startlingly regular features; he's used to people finding beauty in Dean's lined face and scarred body, but Rob's almost inhumanly perfect - no scars, no moles, no asymmetries that he can see. But there's something familiar about him too, and Sam wonders how exactly he became someone Jo could trust so implicitly. Is there a touch of Caleb in the way he moves, combining speed and strength? Or is that Jefferson he sees in those flat eyebrows that kick up at the ends?

"You're wondering why I seem so familiar." Rob's voice is a lot like Pastor Jim's, a light and melodious tenor. But the smirk on his face tosses that idea right out the door; Pastor Jim was never about playing games.

Sam doesn't bother dignifying that with an answer. "You've known Jo for a while now." That much is safe to make as a statement rather than a question; that silent conversation took a lot of practice and a lot of proximity.

"I danced at her wedding," Rob says, matter-of-fact and still not giving anything away.

Sam's patience for this game of alpha dogs runs out. "Long time then. Look, she thought you could help me out. My brother's gone missing, and all I know is that he was hunting some fae."

"Oh, I'm quite certain that's not _all_ you know," Rob grins.

Sam's so used to using his size to intimidate the recalcitrant and the stubborn that his feet move him forward before he remembers that it won't work this time, not if getting closer to Rob means he has to tip his head back a little to meet the guy's eyes. He clenches his fists and counts to five, trying to keep his temper in check; this guy really doesn't owe him anything. "Dean is important to Jo," he says as calmly as he can. As if that is the best reason he can think of for why Dean is worthy of saving.

"And yet, there's nothing I can do tonight," Rob says, not a single note of apology in his voice. "She's closing up soon. Go find a place to stay, get some sleep, get your story straight. I'll still be here tomorrow."

Just hearing the word "sleep" makes him pretty much ready to drop; he's been milking that last drop of adrenaline for way too long. "I don't - I don't know where to go," he mumbles. Aside from Jo, there's no friendly face in this city, and unlike Sarah, she doesn't have room to spare; he actually has no idea how well or poorly the bar is doing or how that affects her salary.

Rob picks up his bag and hands it to him. "Make a right out of the bar, go six doors down. You'll see a building with a blue door. Kind of a youth hostel."

Before he can even repeat the directions back, he's on the wrong side of Jo's door, his duffel still in his hands.  
*

For twenty-five bucks a night, he thinks as he brushes his teeth at the cracked sink, towel and clean boxers gripped tightly between his knees, this place isn't all that bad. He got the last bed and the five guys he's sharing the room with all lit out early, jabbering excitedly to each other in German, holding maps and brochures, their faces going ruddy under childlike pompom hats in the overheated room. So he's got a little privacy too, some quiet time to think about what he knows and what he doesn't. He's going to get Dean back; he didn't free him from the deal only to lose him to something else.

*

He has to knock at the door of the bar; it's still before noon, and the place isn't technically open. Jo opens the door for him, her hair tied in a smooth little knot, wearing a dingy shirt and jeans with the knees just starting to fray. "He's back there," she says, hiking her thumb in the direction of the back left corner and reaching out for the mop she propped up against the side of the door.

Sam steps gingerly across the damp floor, making his way to the table where Rob is sitting with casual ownership, as if his wooden chair is a throne. Before Rob can invite him to do so, Sam sits across from him. Rob smiles and raises his beer stein. "So, what's the story, Saintly?"

"Saintly?" he asks, sure that it's a joke but not getting it; he hates that feeling, and his first few months at Stanford he felt like he was drowning in it.

"I asked Joanna all about you and this brother who's apparently so close to her heart. Funny how it seems to work out this way, isn't it? You and Dean, Sean and me - one good boy and one bad boy in each family -"

"Dean's not -"

"Dean's not who I meant was the bad one." Rob says it decisively, taking a long sip and then laying his stein down. His eyes are bright blue and merciless. "But you've got everyone else thinking he is. That's quite a trick, Saintly."

He's not responsible for other people's perceptions of them, or how completely Jo lost her heart to his brother. "Sean was your brother?"

"Close as," Rob says, defiant in a way that makes no sense. "Tell me, what did you figure out about Dean's disappearance?"

He still has no reason to trust this guy, but no other real options either. Sam takes a deep breath and just goes for it. "He was visiting a friend of his, Bobby, out in South Dakota. The fae were somewhere pretty close by. If they were fae." All the things he doesn't know seem to be piling up in front of him in a giant heap. "They didn't seem to be behaving like ordinary fae."

"What do you mean?"

"Bobby said Dean read all the lore, obeyed it to the letter; Dean wasn't about to mess with something like that. But there must have been something that wasn't in the books."

"And how long have these fae been in South Dakota?" It's clear from his voice that he can't even conceive of fae in South Dakota, and Sam suddenly realizes that that part of the story never quite fit for him either.

"I don't know. Can't have been that long, or Bobby would've gotten rid of them himself or at least asked Dean to take care of it on one of his earlier visits," Sam muses, thinking it through as he speaks the words.

There's a gleam in Rob's eyes now, a look of definite interest. "Wanderers, then? Like a lost tribe?"

"Maybe?" What does it matter, as long as they can get Dean out?

"What else?" Rob finishes his beer in one long swallow.

"That's it."

"You need to call this Bobby and get the whole story."

"He won't talk to me." It costs him to say it, because he knows that he's blowing Dean's chances of getting out of this sooner rather than later.

Rob takes a long, careful look at him with those piercing eyes. "Will he talk to Joanna?"

*

Sam reads Bobby's number off his cell phone's "received calls" menu and Jo dials it with a finger still wet with Formula 409. She's sitting between him and Rob and she's got the handset cranked up so loud that Sam can hear each ring clearly.

"Singer Salvage."

"Bobby! It's - it's Annie," she says, her eyes darting between Rob's face and his before dropping as she says the name.

Bobby's voice gets noticeably warmer. "How you doing, kiddo?" he asks genially. "I got your mom's newest number around here somewhere -"

"No," she says. "That's not . . . Sam Winchester just called me, said Dean went missing when he was off hunting fae with you." She lets sorrow creep into her voice. Sam doesn't think she's that good an actress; not everything is a put-on. "Is that true?"

Bobby sighs. "Yeah. Dean came out this way by himself, and we got to talking, and I told him that there were fae not far from here that I'd been meaning to do something about, and he offered to take care of it for me. Said he'd found a self-bored stone about a year back and he'd been wanting to get some use out of it." 

"He just drove off and you didn't see him after that?" Jo asks.

"Hell, he walked off, didn't want to take his car. 'What if that fae bitch wants to turn it into her fuckin' chariot?' he said. 'You know what happens to pretty, shiny things out there.'"

Like Dean wasn't a bigger prize than any ten cars, even any ten Impalas. "It's that close? Walking distance from your place?" Jo presses.

"Yeah -" Bobby cuts himself off. "Joanna Beth Harvelle, don't you get involved in this. You stay away from Sam, you hear me?"

Jo dares a glance at him, and Sam's heart sinks; she'd gone along with the _tell Bobby I called you_ story, but this is going to get her to think he can't be trusted, and Dean might not have that kind of time. "Why?" she whispers.

"Just please trust me on this one," Bobby pleads. "Sam did something not even Dean would have done, and that's saying something, when you think about how crazy that boy got for his family. What Sam did was dangerous and stupid, and he never once thought about the consequences."

Jo draws in a breath and Bobby jumps back in before she can ask. "Can't say more than that; I gave Dean my word."

Jo looks nearly sick with upset. "Bobby," she says, closing her eyes. "Can you get my mom's number for me?"  
*

Sam needs to be doing something, anything, because trying to figure out how much of the intrigued gleam in Rob's eyes was for real, how many of the cogitation wrinkles on his forehead were genuine, was only making him antsy. He's only got Missouri's word, after all, that Dean is actually okay, and that's not exactly incontrovertible proof. Not when she'd sounded so confused just to hear his voice.

The Columbus branch of the New York Public Library is not going to cut it; they've got pretty much no texts on fae except for the bowdlerized versions of fairy tales and a couple of books on the trend of feminist fairy tales. 

There's hardly anyone in there, though, so he gets a solid hour on one of the computers with no hassle. He can't seem to find anything that isn't just a repetition of what he remembers reading years ago. Time to find a different venue; Columbia University's just a subway ride away, and they're bound to have something better. He smudges just enough grime onto his Stanford ID to camouflage the year of expiration, sticks it in his pocket, and pulls out his Metrocard.

Turns out the smudging wasn't even necessary; all he needs to do to get into the undergrad library is to swipe his Stanford ID. There's pretty much no one else in the neighboring stacks when he finds the section he's looking for, so he hauls his take over to a nearby table, spreads the books out, and starts to read.

The only bit of information he comes across that nudges at his memory is the explanation for a self-bored stone's properties in a sort of homemade dictionary for hunters, painstakingly pieced together but without any citations or attributions. The text claims that by looking through a self-bored stone, a stone with a hole made only by the natural, unplanned force of moving water, the fae can clearly be seen, but only by the one who found the stone. And that explains why Bobby didn't take on the fae himself, if he didn't have one of his own; Bobby can be trusted that far at least.

*

Jo's eyes are red-rimmed when he walks back into Mary Kelly's, but she gives him a small smile and pours him a beer without making him ask, so he figures that her tears were more about her mother than him. 

"Saintly!" he hears, and he curses himself for accepting the moniker so easily as his body swings automatically around to find Rob, over in the corner with his buddies, another game of poker in the works. Sam takes his beer over to their table, and hears Rob say, "Clear out, fellas." He looks on in disbelief when they go without a murmur, leaving their cards and chips just as they are, only taking their drinks with them as they crowd around the bar, laughing raucously to themselves, performing to get more booze out of Jo and maybe a smile out of June.

"I did a little research," Rob announces, eyes gleaming as if reading up on fae lore is his favorite pastime. "From what I can see, the fae - _all_ fae, even this migrant band your brother got snatched by -" he holds up a hand before Sam can protest that description for making Dean sound totally incompetent "- follow a calendar that uses these four dates as pillars. The equinoxes and the solstices."

"Meaning?" Sam prompts impatiently, since Rob is acting like this is some amazing revelation.

"Meaning," Rob says, without apparent offense but with a touch of malice nonetheless, "that the vernal equinox is going to be our first chance to find your brother; that's when the fae are going to be out and about, carousing and hunting and ready to bargain." He makes a show of looking at his watch, gleaming silver on his wrist, polished to a nearly blinding brightness. "And Saintly? It's only the end of January. You've got quite a lot of waiting in your future."

*

Sam uses Jo as his barometer; the fae calendar Rob cited sounded vaguely familiar even though he could find no texts to corroborate it, but Jo seems content to believe Rob's assertions, and even though it's been years since she last saw him and she's loved and lost again, Sam knows that Dean still owns at least a little corner of Jo's heart. She wouldn't be content to be still if she thought there was something she could be doing or prodding him to do.

So he puts on an apron and works behind the bar; she doesn't pay him a wage but he gets to keep his tips, and he's more than covering the sixth of the room he's renting at the hostel. Plus he can keep an eye on Rob, make sure the guy really is using all of his mysterious connections to figure out what they're up against.

June is the best bartender to share a shift with; he figures that out inside of a week. She has absolutely no interest in him at all, doesn't force him to talk when all he wants to do is try to think things through for the umpteenth time or wonder if it's January 24th wherever Dean is too. And June is quick and neat-handed, performing all of her duties with swift, economical movements that the patrons of Mary Kelly's seem to appreciate more than they would a ready ear or a willing shoulder. June's definitely got a story to tell. Sam just doesn't care to hear it.

The bar, against all odds, is packed on Groundhog Day, and he braces himself to hear the same joke for the thirty-seventh time when a big guy with a shock of Kris Kringle white hair makes his way up to the bar. Rob looks up at Sam from his seat at the corner of the bar just then, distracting him. 

The old guy slaps his hand down on the bar and laughs a little at his own forthcoming joke to get Sam's attention. "Hey, you hear if Staten Island Chuck saw his shadow this morning?" Sam dutifully shakes his head, but this guy was apparently expecting a verbal response, and the silence throws him. "Yeah, cause I ran him over last night!" he says, plowing forward anyway, and scowling when his joke falls flat. One long quaff of beer, though, and his good humor is evidently restored. "Never mind, kid," he says genially enough; "you can't help being a little slow."

It's meant nicely, even if no one under the age of a hundred would ever say anything so inflammatory, but it's got the unmistakable ring of truth. He _is_ too slow - couldn't figure out what had been ailing Dean, can't learn about these weird gypsy fae that are holding his brother, can't do much of anything right these days. It's already the beginning of February, and he still has no idea what the plan is for the equinox, coming up in March.

And shit, but he almost forgot about the hunt that was supposed to be his reunion with Dean - February 3rd at Woodstock. 

He still has no transportation or weapons, but maybe working for free has earned him enough goodwill that he can borrow Jo's car.

*

Jo hears him out as he explains the little he knows about the hunt - Dean had most of the details in his head and all the five-year planner says in the two-inch square for February 4 is _Woodstock: musician (guitarist), ghost?, stage. [annual]_

She stands next to him and reads the text herself, squinting at the small handwriting that litters the pages. She traces the outline of the square with a delicate fingertip. "He didn't write if it was an important case or not," she says, voice quiet like she knows the answer that's on the tip of Sam's tongue, that to Dean, all cases were critical, and the only distinction he made was that cases involving kids in harm's way automatically got first priority.

Jo flips the planner closed, strokes her finger down its pebbly cover, and then tosses it on the couch. "Help me out here, Sam," she says, clearing the coffee table of its knickknacks and detritus, handling the little bud vase that looks like the most expensive thing in the apartment - probably a wedding gift - with care. 

He stoops to help, stepping back when she finishes and whisks the fringed cloth off the surface; she bends to undo the snaps on the trunk. When she opens it, he sees a rough approximation of the Impala's trunk, heavier on the knives than Dean's collection, but a good selection nonetheless. 

"Take your pick," she offers, gesturing grandly, a deadly, discount Vanna White, beautiful in her tank top, flannel shirt, and jeans, and he looks at what she's offering and wonders if this is all he'll have when it comes time to save Dean.

"Sam?" she asks, laying a light hand on his arm. He shakes his head, and she winds her arms around his neck, draws him down, and leaves a sweet, fleeting kiss on his cheek. "Close up when you're done here, okay?" she asks, and then leaves him mercifully alone.

He shouldn't be distracting himself with thoughts of Dean; he needs to concentrate on this hunt, on figuring out what he'll need to get rid of the ghost of a Woodstock guitarist. He dashes the water from his eyes and squats next to the open trunk and starts to take careful inventory.

When he's got what he wanted and arranged everything in his duffel bag - each weapon wrapped in its own piece of clothing, just like Dean taught him - he secures the latches on the trunk and heads downstairs. He'll need to leave first thing in the morning, and he forgot to get the keys from Jo before she went back to the bar, so he heads downstairs instead of back to the hostel. "Jo?" he calls as he makes his way down the stairs, keeping the duffel tucked tight and secure against his side. He doesn't see her behind the bar or weaving between the small dark tables arranged in a sine curve against each wall. She could just be getting another case of beer from the basement; he leaves his duffel at the top of the steps and heads down the last flight of stairs.

"Jo?" he says again, and hears a gasp. He gets clear of the stairs and sees Jo on Rob's lap, her hair tumbled out of its sleek ponytail and her face, looking at him over her shoulder, flushed. Rob's hand - it looks enormous on her - keeps stroking up and down her bare back, and his glittering blue gaze pins Sam in place. She looks small and vulnerable compared to him, her pale hair like gossamer and fine as a child's; there's an ugly moment when he wonders if Rob is forcing her somehow. But there's no shame on her face, just lust, and he blinks hard and forces himself to speak.

"Keys," Sam blurts out, rooted to the spot. "I need your keys."

Rob's holding up a shirt for Jo to slip into, and Sam turns away to let her get hastily dressed. "I'll get them for you," she says, her hands pushing her hair back into place.

He follows her up the stairs, the smell of her rose-scented perfume or lotion or whatever heavy in his nose. There are no explanations offered, and they make the trip up to her apartment in silence. She meets his eyes without any emotion but concern when she hands him the ring of keys she's pulled off a little hook on her bedroom wall. "Be safe, Sam," she says, and lets him lead the way back out.

*

He makes the drive up with a couple of Jo's mix CDs - one an energetic burst of rhythm and sound, the other simply titled "Sad Songs" - for company; his brain has been surprisingly cooperative about refusing to process what he'd stumbled across. It takes a few tries to make it to the right place, since he never had Dean's astonishing sense of direction, but he makes it there with plenty of time.

He gets himself a table at the local diner and takes his time over a long, leisurely meal. When he finally goes out to the concert area, he's stuffed full of good food and ready to work.

He's scoping out the area, the stage with special attention, when he becomes aware that he's humming something to himself. He stops and refocuses, listening to what he's humming, trying to place the tune. It's nothing he's ever heard before, and he turns to find the ghostly guitarist walking forward from the shadows, clever fingers plucking out that same tune that's insinuated itself into his brain.

The musician plays steadily for a few minutes, and the volume of his electric guitar keeps ramping up. He's dressed in clothes that look like they could have come from the 60's, though they kind of look more like a costume than actual everyday clothes - bellbottoms, tie-dyed shirt, and a cloth headband for his long yellow hair. Sam just waits; there has to be some reason no one's ever dispatched this ghost before.

Maybe the ghost just wants a little adulation - he's not hurting anybody with a free concert once a year, and it's not like it's at a particularly busy time of the year anyway. Sam claps. "That was great, man."

"Yeah," the ghost says, then launches into another song, grimacing artistically as his fingers fly over the guitar. 

Ten songs later, Sam's getting tired of repeating his false praise. "Wonderful. You're very talented."

That was apparently the wrong thing to say. "Then why wasn't I asked to play?" the ghost snarls. "I came and I played for them, and they still wouldn't see that I belonged there." There's a demented light in his eyes now, and his lip is curled over gnashing teeth. "But I outlasted all of them. They're all dead, and I'm still here, playing music they couldn't even dream of."

Dean would know how to talk rock with this guy, how to soothe his ego by naming all the musicians who obviously owe him a debt. Sam's going to have to play this a different way, by appealing to his lust for fame.

He walks forward and the ghost's head snaps up to meet his gaze; long hair falls back and Sam can see an ugly red mark stretched across his throat. "What's your name, man?"

"'Nobody,'" the ghost screams, rage still shrieking through the word. His right hand holds his guitar pick up high. "They said I was nobody." The pick, turned in his hand to reveal a deadly-sharp edge, comes down suddenly at Sam.

He gets his arms up just in time to protect his face; the razor-sharp pick catches on the fabric of his coat, and the ghost plucks it free and makes another play for his skin.

Sam's bleeding from a dozen long, shallow cuts on his face and hands, fumbling for the canister of salt, and cursing Jo for not keeping rocksalt shotgun shells in her bag of tricks; the swirl of white crystals he throws grants him a temporary reprieve. The ghost keeps reappearing, a few steps further from Sam each time, and finally starts to play again. As the last long note reverberates, he raises the pick to his own throat and draws it unhesitatingly across.

Sam stumbles back to the car and wonders when exactly he'd messed this one up so badly.

The cuts won't stop bleeding, deeper than he'd initially thought, and he hadn't bothered to pack a proper first-aid kit when he'd loaded up Jo's little car. There are old napkins and a bottle of holy water in the glove compartment, though, so he makes do, the napkins sticking to his wounds and fluttering every time he moves a muscle.

The holy water stings like a bitch, and he doesn't know if there's any way that the blood already on the pick - from the first time Nobody committed suicide - could have mixed with his. His mind keeps replaying Nobody's unerring tracing of the slit in his throat with the deadly pick, and he casts about for something else, anything, to think about. When he finds something, he wishes he hadn't. Because now he's stuck wondering, despair and betrayal sinking his stomach, if Jo's faith in Rob - the faith that he'd clung to in order to persuade himself he was doing all he could for Dean - is real, or if it's just been fucked into her.

He throws up every last bite of that big, hearty meal he'd eaten, right there next to the little blue car. There's a pink splash of vomit on the left front wheel, and he steps around the puddle to get into the car, pull another napkin from the glove compartment, gargle with some holy water, and wipe his mouth temporarily clean.

*

Only a few of the cuts are clotting. He's trimmed the napkins away so that only the parts glued to him with blood are still on, but even those small scraps, yellow dyed red, make him look strange and he gets a few odd looks when he's stopped at traffic lights. The blood loss isn't nearly enough to make him pass out, but he is a little woozy, browning out every once in a while as he chugs quickly down the highways and streets back to Jo's. That's all he needs, is to get back in one piece and he'll have all the time he wants to recover.

Of course, traffic is a bitch and a half, the West Side Highway backed up with cars barely moving at a crawl. He cracks a window just to keep himself awake, but it's too cold to keep open for more than a few seconds. He pops Jo's rousing mix of angry-girl rock into the CD player and lets the rhythms of the guitars and drums do the work for him.

He gets lucky with a parking space a block behind the bar, then just sits and rests for a moment. The ring of keys Jo loaned him thankfully includes one for the back door of the bar, so he slips through the alley and heads straight up to her apartment. His duffel bag is heavy, pressing mercilessly down on his shoulder, and he fumbles at the top of the stairs for the key to this lock.

"Sam!" he hears, a carrying whisper behind him. He swivels a little unsteadily and Jo's big eyes get wide and spooked at the sight of him. "God, what happened?" she asks, pulling the keys from his grasp and fitting the right one into the lock in short order. "Get in, quick," she hisses, not being all that careful with the pressure of her hand against his lacerated skin.

"Ah, fuck," he groans. "Careful."

"Keep it down," she says quietly and firmly, taking his bag off his shoulder and dumping it unceremoniously on the floor, and eyeing him speculatively. He sits on the couch and tries to pay attention. "I've got some stuff for those cuts. Are they just on your face and arms?"

"Torso too, I think," he says, trying to lift his shirt to check. Her hands take over the task before he can finish or his shoulders protest. He's never seen her this fidgety. "What's wrong?"

"Did you know you had the FBI on your tail, Sam?" she asks, grim-faced, while she pulls his shirt off; her hand reaches up to smooth his hair down automatically.

"Oh, _fuck_ ," he says.

"This guy walks into the bar, suit and tie and badge, and says there's a dangerous criminal in the area, and he's going around to all the bars and libraries and motels in the area to find out if anybody's seen Sam Winchester."

"How -" No, he already knows. He'd used his real Stanford ID at the library, and to get the youth rate at the hostel. Not that he'd put it past Gutierrez to snitch, but he's the one who screwed this up. God, is he glad that Dean can't be gotten to by any FBI agent right now. "Was his name Henrickson?" God damn him for thinking the FBI would listen to reason.

Jo was just waiting for him to piece it together in his head, apparently, because she says, "You know you can't go back to that hostel, right? This everything you got right now?" She prods his duffel bag gently with the toe of her shoe and looks unsurprised by his stunned nod. "Guess you're sleeping on my couch, then." She sighs. "And you can't work at the bar anymore; we just got lucky that Henrickson only asked me and June and not any customers if we'd seen you."

"June?" 

"She was on today, went and got me when the guy showed up, and lied like a champ for you." Jo's already evaluating how the new living arrangements are going to work; the lack of attention in her voice gives her away.

He knew he was right about June; he knew Dean would love her.

Jo comes at him with gauze and ointments and more holy water then, and Sam braces himself, staying silent while she works. "Done," she says, satisfaction in her voice as she starts cleaning up. He's not really paying all that much attention to what she's doing as she moves around the apartment, and he nearly face-plants in the meal Jo puts in front of him. "Got it," she says. "I'll just leave this in the microwave for if you get hungry later. Go ahead, lie down. I'll get you some blankets and a pillow."

He pulls his jeans off while he's still sitting, too tired to contemplate getting up to pull his sweatpants out of his bag. "Jo," he mumbles when she appears before his blurry eyes again, shaking a blanket out of its folds and laying it over him.

"Yeah, I know," she says, light as a lullaby, while she tucks a soft, cool pillow underneath his heavy head.

*

When he wakes up, stomach growling and mouth tasting incredibly vile, the apartment is empty. He has no idea what time it is, other than clearly time to rejoin the land of the living.

The apartment is cold, but not as bad as it could be, given that there's a blustery February wind howling outside, tossing flakes of snow in every direction. He scurries into the bathroom, snagging his duffel on the way, and flips the light. He has to squint because the light bulb is bare and harsh, but from what he can see in the mirror, Jo took good care of him. The cuts are dry and dark, healing instead of still oozing. As long as he's gentle with the soap and judicious with the hot water, they should keep knitting instead of opening back up.

He brushes his teeth, bending far down to spit into Jo's low little seashell-shaped sink and nearly cracking his head on the medicine cabinet when he straightens back up. There's a clean towel folded on top of the commode; he uses the toilet and hops right into the shower. It sputters for a moment before coming on strongly. The water is scalding but loses heat steadily after the first two minutes or so. The bar of soap is nearly gone, but its fragrance of flowers is still strong; same with the bottles of shampoo and conditioner he finds perched in the lime-crusted shower caddy.

All of these girl-scents are overwhelming him, so he scrubs up quickly and gets out of the shower as soon as he can. He stays in the bathroom to keep warm while he towels his hair and body dry, pulls on underwear and a clean pair of jeans, and then leaves with the duffel in his hand. He dumps it on the couch, folds up the blanket, and opens up the coffee-table trunk. He's unpacking Jo's weapons from his bag and putting them back into place when his stomach growls again. He finishes up quickly and turns to the little nook that makes up the kitchen.

There's a pre-packaged calzone sitting in the microwave, looking like a mini-football and about as appetizing, but he's not going to turn his nose up at what he's offered. He scarfs it down as quickly as he can, given that its shell has gone pretty tough, and opens the fridge to find anything else edible.

A hand curls over his on the refrigerator handle, making him jump. "She sent me up to check on you," Rob says.

"I'm fine," Sam snaps. He doesn't know what to make of this guy, but something is telling him not to trust him. "Do you always do what Jo tells you?"

Rob just laughs. "Jealous?" he taunts, and Sam's jaw clenches. "She's a pretty girl with a heavy heart, and there's nothing wrong with her taking whatever comfort I offer."

"She's married!" Sam hisses.

"What's Sean's is mine. You know all about sharing with your brother, don't you, Saintly? Now get over there."

"What?"

"Go stand in the light; I need to look you over."

"I said I'm fine."

"And I'm just looking to verify that so I can tell Jo what she wants to hear."

Sam stays stubbornly rooted to the spot. "Jo wouldn't cheat on her husband."

Rob's hand shoots out, quick as a snake, and drags him into the light. "Oh, you are jealous. No need, Saintly. She just misses him and I'm all she's got left. But you - I've heard all about you." Rob's fingers are warm and thick, prodding gently at his skin, and Sam looks down at his own chest, lit up and covered in goosebumps, and realizes he never put a shirt on after his shower. "Word is, you could charm the pants off anybody you wanted, and I've seen enough to know people are right about that, but they say you don't because you don't _want_ anymore, not after what happened to your girlfriend." Sam feels himself rebelling, starting to protest when he hears Rob so casually dismiss Jess, but those heavy fingers flatten against his sternum and push firmly until his back is against the wall, and those blue eyes have gone hot and mesmerizing. "But I think it's simpler than that - you just don't know _who_ you want, so you haven't made a move."

That hand slides down and forms a warm cup over the jut of his left hip. "Do you, Saintly?" Rob asks, still sounding amused, and before Sam can process anything that's happening, Rob's mouth, hot and wet and wide, is on his.

Sam struggles and bucks his hips away from the wall, attempting to shake free, but Rob just shifts to press Sam back with his body, pinning his wrists against the wall with his hands, and not letting up at all. The kiss goes on and on, and Sam is getting lightheaded. He can feel fingers stroking his hips, dipping just below the waistband of his jeans, and he vaguely registers that that must mean that his own arms and hands are free. That is important information to have, he's sure, but he can't really remember why.

Rob is licking at his mouth, at his cheeks, everywhere, and Sam tries to keep his grip on Rob's shirt so that he doesn't fall; his knees are refusing to lock. Rob's voracious mouth is on his neck, warm, so warm in this cold room and he really should have put a shirt on at some point, or maybe he should just get back under the blanket, and Rob must have the same idea, because he's undoing Sam's pants like it's inevitable, not even a question, and Sam's head lolls when Rob's hot hand slips inside, burrowing past his underwear to find his cock. The heat passes from Rob's hand to Sam's dick, Sam feeling the flood of blood rushing to fill him, and he hears Rob saying something in a pleased tone, feels the pleasure of Rob's unhesitating grip and clever fingers, the wet suction of a grinning mouth against his neck, and the exhilaration of all thought except release being wiped from his mind.

He comes back to himself, to the real world, when he registers that he's shivering, barefooted and bare-chested, trembling against the wall. He pushes away from the wall, does up his jeans, and curls back up on the couch, spreading the blanket clumsily over himself. He looks around for some sign that he imagined the whole encounter, but his head is too heavy to hold up for very long, and he falls asleep within minutes.

*

Sam spends his days split into two different people, neither part a comfortable fit. With Jo, it's researching what he can on her second-hand desktop with dial-up modem, sharing meals and chores, staying in an apartment crowded with perfume and rituals, and her clear eyes watching him, weighing his fitness for what lies ahead. All of that disappears when Jo is at work behind the bar and Rob comes up to the apartment, a heavy tread on creaky stairs that Jo has to hear, opens the door, draws near, and Sam's mind goes hazy.

There's a loose cloud of pleasure around everything he does, the sweet slide of going to his knees and pulling Rob's jeans open, dragging the zipper down tooth by tooth and hearing each click; the way his thighs go numb from being locked into position as he bobs his head, throat opening with each pass; the euphoria of eliciting those groans and grunts from Rob's pale pink mouth. Sam rises to his feet and opens his mouth for Rob's heavy kiss.

When they break apart, the world stops shimmering and starts to take on a more definitive shape. "What are we -" he asks, his heart racing in his chest, his breath coming in short little bursts.

"You'll get your brother back," Rob promises, answering a different question entirely.

*

Sam can hear Rob coming up the stairs and he sees him walk into Jo's apartment like it's his. "The vernal equinox is in three weeks," Sam says, pushing his chair back from the kitchen table and getting to his feet as Rob sits. He can feel his face go red with anger. "I need to know how we're getting Dean back."

Rob looks up at him for a long moment, eyes staying on him even when the front door opens and Jo walks in, juggling three bags of groceries. "Do you trust me?" he asks.

"No," Sam says. It's the truth. He glances sidelong at Jo, who's putting the food away; his view of her face is blocked by one of the cabinet doors, but he knows from the way she stays flatfooted, doesn't get up on her tiptoes, that her movements are pretty much automatic and that she's thinking more about what she's hearing than what she's doing.

"All the research I've done suggests that Midsummer is the time when the barrier between the worlds is thinnest. If we make our move on the equinox instead, we could fail and not get another chance."

Sam's eyes narrow. "Why do you think we'll fail? What don't you know?"

"We should wait until Midsummer." Rob gets up, gets himself a beer from the fridge, and cracks one open for Jo while he's at it. They clink bottles briefly, unthinkingly, and it sets Sam's teeth on edge. He's ready to start screaming when Rob continues, "And that friend of yours, what's her name, said that Dean was just sleeping, right, not being hurt. He won't mind the wait."

Dean might not, but every day without his brother is another lash from the whip. He's clinging to what he knows with bloody and slipping fingertips. He shakes his head, still arguing, though mutely, because words are failing him now.

Rob's throat is long and pale when he drains his beer. Jo hops up and perches on the one square foot of counter space in the kitchen. "Well, what do your visions tell you? Anything saying vernal equinox or summer solstice?" she asks, her voice carefully reasonable, and Sam hates her for a moment for taking Rob's side, for letting Dean stay in this new, unbearable coma.

But Rob's eyes are trained on him like twin blue lasers and Rob's gone motionless and somehow looming in that moment. For once, his expression is easy to read, even if not to decipher; Sam sees a mixture of avarice and calculation and puzzlement on his face. It's setting off all sorts of warning bells in his head, but there is none of Gordon's hatred and fear in it, so he stifles his alarm - his reactions are all fucked when it comes to Rob - and tries to answer on Jo's question.

Try as he might, though, he cannot think of the answer. He racks his brains and finally looks up at her, posed like a stone angel, and says slowly, "I don't think I've had one - a vision - since Dean killed the Yellow-Eyed Demon." She takes a long, slow sip of her beer. "But that makes sense, doesn't it?" he asks. "I mean, he gave 'em to me, so I guess they stopped when he died."

Jo shrugs. "I'm not exactly an expert on visions, Sam. Maybe you should talk to somebody who is."

She means Missouri, even though she's never met the woman or heard her full name. Lost as he is, Sam can still recognize a good idea. As soon as he's got the place to himself - as soon as he can escape Jo's quiet persistence and Rob's intent gaze - he'll make the call.

*

The moment his chance comes, he seizes it, pressing send on his cell phone as soon as Missouri's name pops up on the screen. "Missouri!" he says as soon as the line is picked up.

He only hears the hesitation because he was listening for it. "Sam, I'm glad you've called, sugar," she says, her voice, as ever, high and sweet, but he's too keyed up to be soothed even a little bit.

"Why? What's going on?"

"I wanted to try - yes, there he is. You remember last time we spoke, I could sense Dean just by hearing your voice?"

"Yeah?"

"I wanted to try to see him again, make sure I didn't tell you wrong, but I couldn't locate that boy for the life of me, but now that I can hear you, I can see him, clear as day."

"How - how is he?"

"He looks just fine, baby," she says. "Sleeping. The sunlight is warm on his face and there are flowers everywhere, heaped up all around him." She continues and he closes his eyes, trying to get the image into his own mind.

All he can see are funereal, nightmare images of Dean crushed under the weight of flowers, the blossoms making a coffin of sorts as he's lowered into the ground, the sun shining brightly as he sinks into the cold earth. "He's really okay?"

Missouri doesn't sigh or get impatient with him. She just says "yes" over and over, a litany of affirmation, and he lets each repetition push away a piece of that image.

When he's finally calm, he says, "Missouri. I have a question. About visions."

She sounds dubious but willing to listen. "Sure, sugar. I'll do my best."

"The Yell - the Demon that you sensed in our house in Lawrence - I mean, the first time, after my dad needed to know what happened to my mom. That Demon said he'd given me the visions. And I haven't had even a single one since the Demon was killed, and . . . I don't know, I just wanted to make sure that made sense?"

She sucks in a breath. "No," she says, firm as he's ever heard her. "Visions are powerful creations. And you know gifts don't go away once the giver's gone. That kind of energy doesn't die out; it can get channeled differently, maybe, or passed along. But that power remains." She pauses, and he can sense her reluctance to continue.

"What? Tell me."

"It's too powerful an ability to be given, even by something like the Demon I sensed in your house. That Demon lied to you, Sam; he didn't give you anything, and he for sure couldn't have taken it away."

"Then where did the visions go?" he asks, frustrated. She says something in response, but he's stopped hearing her, because every part of his subconscious has reared up to shout the ugly truth at him. He knows where his visions went. It's just that he can see no way to fix it.

*

He can't quite work up the nerve to confirm what his gut is already telling him must be true about how he slipped the noose of his visions, and if Rob drops in more often, uses those hands and mouth to strip Sam clean and broken, then it's no more than he deserves.

It feels like he keeps coming to that same conclusion, only to have his thought processes interrupted by Rob's appearances. Rob's taking the stairs two at a time today, quick rather than deliberate, laughing when he opens the door. 

"Breakthrough, Saintly," he croons as his hand comes up, holding Sam's skull tenderly, finger stroking lightly at the back of his neck. "I'm getting awfully close." His mouth is pink and pretty, the color surprising against his pale skin, the green cast of his jaw. His mouth is hot and inviting, skillful tongue sweeping everywhere, and Sam's head falls back automatically, welcoming him, opening his mouth for plundering.

Rob's hand is twisting in his hair, not painful, just a tease, a hint of playfulness, and Sam's arms come up to lock around his neck, dimly but unmistakably recognizing his own surrender as the greatest self-indulgence he's ever committed.

*

"You were right," Sam tells Rob while he watches the water boil for pasta. Jo buys ingredients instead of frozen dinners now; Sam's still under house arrest after Henrickson made a surprise second visit to the bar. "About waiting for Midsummer, I mean." He'd agonized over Missouri's words, pulled them apart and tried to make them fit in some other way, but what she'd described had been unmistakably summer, Dean with summer flowers and summer sunshine poured over him, still lost in that silent slumber.

Rob lifts one eyebrow at him. "Starting to trust me?"

Sam shakes his head stubbornly, turning his back to pour the spaghetti into the bubbling water.

Rob's quiet but Sam pretends to be absorbed in stirring the pasta. "Do you at least believe we want the same thing?" Rob's voice is quiet and sincere and Sam is pathetically grateful that they're not close enough to touch; his mind is still his own.

He pivots sharply and Rob spreads his hands as if to say _you got me_ , but Sam's looking past the gestures and the expression on Rob's face, trying to find some kernel of truth somewhere in the man in front of him. "Not exactly, but I think we're in the same ballpark," he concedes.

He's surprised when what looks very much like hurt flashes across Rob's face. "Will you believe me when I promise you something?" Rob doesn't wait for any acknowledgment before barreling on. "I promise on anything you like - on Joanna's life - that I'll do everything in my power to get you to your brother, and to get you both out of the fae's realm."

Sam scrambles to press his unexpected advantage. "I'll hold you to that," he says curtly, turning back to the stove.

Rob's hand steals up his shirt and pulls him back into the heat of Rob's warm body. "I promise, I promise," Rob says as his heavy mouth works along the column of Sam's neck.

*

Sam's fingering the marks Rob left on his throat in front of the bathroom mirror, watching stray droplets of water left over from his shower trickle past them, make them shine and glitter like bruises never should, when he thinks that what he really needs is to know more about Rob.

He boots up Jo's cranky computer, waiting for the homepage to load. He searches for "Sean Connor" - it hadn't hit him until now that Sean's mother must have been either oblivious or a huge fan - and narrows the search geographically. Once he finds the right Sean Connor, he clicks the link to the _New York Times_ article on the hostage situation at Red Apple Bank. Sean gets the same amount of space as all of the other victims, only a few short lines: _Sean Connor, 31, owner of Hell's Kitchen bar Mary Kelly's, was the first to be gunned down. Connor leaves behind a wife, Joanna Connor; his mother, Mary Kelly Connor, died a few hours after her son, of an apparent heart attack._

The bar wasn't named for a victim of Jack the Ripper, Sam notes absently. He clicks back to the page of search results and clicks on article after article, trying to find one that mentions the guy who claimed to be the next best thing Sean had to a brother. Finally, one appears, a long, two-column write-up in a tiny free newspaper that focuses on the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. The accompanying photograph shows Sean's coffin on the strong shoulders of the pallbearers; Sam squints and enlarges the picture, but he can't be sure if that is Rob at the back left. The article details the widow Mary Kelly's determination to turn the bar she'd inherited from her husband into a profitable enterprise and how eagerly Sean followed in her footsteps. Jo's not really part of the story, and as he skims he nearly skips over just what he's looking for. The second column is full of quotes from one Rex Robson, son of the twin sister of Sean's mother, who describes himself as Sean's "big brother" and rhapsodizes about Sean's love of the neighborhood and plans for the future. 

Now that he's got a full name for Rob, he plugs it into the search engine. Even using every trick he ever developed in probing for anything shady, Rob comes up with no red flags. Just an ordinary, rather mediocre progress through the public school system, no college degree, and a few years of minor-league baseball under his belt. The pictures confirm it's him, but Sam sits back in frustration, knowing there has to be more to the story.

*

Rob has him flat on his back on Jo's lumpy couch, spread out over the towel that's still damp from his morning shower, laid out like a feast. The glittering blue of Rob's gaze is too much to take, so Sam closes his eyes, but that only seems to intensify the sensation of his nipples being pinched and licked, his hips smoothed and caressed, his cock stroked and savored. He can feel himself getting heavy, limbs going lax, and he doesn't even think of resisting when Rob pulls him up, sweeps a thumb across the jut of his cheekbone, and gets him into position.

Rob's cock is long, somehow completely foreign and yet familiar, like a weapon seen but not yet wielded. It's heavy in Sam's mouth, weighing down his jaw like a rock, constricting his throat like poison. He will ache after this, will realize anew that all this is real from the soreness, and he opens his mouth willingly, lavishing saliva and suction and attention on it, hearing with satisfaction the noises of pleasure that Rob makes.

When Rob pulls himself free, cutting off the movements that have become rhythmic, have nearly become automatic, Sam shakes the hair out of his eyes and blinks dazedly up at Rob. Strong hands at his waist coax him into turning over, rewarding him for prompt obedience with a lingering caress of his side and a few moments' tender consideration for his dick. He's pulled easily up to his hands and knees and he trembles as air hits all the saliva-slick patches of his skin, as he waits blindly for Rob to show him how to move. There's a cold wetness being pushed between his legs; his back bows sharply, immediately, and sounds start tumbling out of his throat. Behind the coldness is a hot spear that breaches him, and he realizes it's Rob's finger only when he feels strong teeth surrounding his shoulder. He concentrates and spreads his legs a little wider, as far as the couch will allow. He breathes heavily and waits for more.

Rob pushes in slowly, and Sam feels every last inch of the agonizing slide in and the excruciating retreat. He can't seem to catch up and make time stand still, so there's no chance of adjusting before the position changes; he shudders and arches his back, seeking other contact. Rob's hand finds his dick, that perfect sly grip that only gets better with friction, and Sam can hear himself mewling, whimpering, but can't bring himself to stop. Everything is heat and fullness and a beautiful burn and in that last, long moment he believes every word that Rob has ever said to him.

*

The only rest he's getting is what he finds with Rob next to him, draped over him, touching him and clouding his mind. The rest of the time, he can't escape the bitter knowledge of his own folly, or the even worse realization that he still sees no other alternative for what he did.

Jo's started leaving a bottle of aspirin by the coffeemaker in the mornings and biting her lip anxiously at night before she heads off to her bed, leaving him alone. He can see for himself that he looks like shit, eyes ringed with dark circles, an unhealthy look of not enough - or any - fresh air hanging over him.

It's not like he really believes that confession is good for the soul. Not after everything he's seen, every secret he's had to keep, and Dean's utter lack of faith in anything except family. But he does believe in punishment, in abasement as a way to forge a new beginning and he smiles to himself as he dials Bobby's number.

"Singer Salvage," Bobby says into the phone when he picks up after a dozen rings. His voice is tired and raspy.

"Did Dean get my visions?" There's no point beating about the bush, not with Bobby, not with the person Dean trusted with his pain.

Bobby grunts, a sound of surprise rather than affirmation or negation.

"I know you promised him you wouldn't say anything. But you can tell me yes or no. When I did that spell to unite our souls and give half to Dean and half to me, it backfired, right? Because even after his year was up and the spell was supposed to reverse itself, it didn't, not completely, right? So he got stuck with my visions." He swallows, hard. "How could he keep it from me all that time? I know what those headaches were like." He shakes his head in frustration. "So he got that piece of my soul along with all of his own back, and, what? I'm walking around with not quite a complete soul?"

"You got some of his to keep," Bobby says, voice rich with anger. "You a better hunter since you broke your brother's crossroads deal, Sam? Dean said something about it, he was so proud of you, the way you'd stepped up and become a world-class hunter. Wasn't till he said it out loud that he realized that you'd kept that part of him that seemed like it was born to live this life. Made me swear not to give you a piece of my mind."

That's why. That's why he could take the kill-shots, why the Impala seemed to fit him better, why Dean had been so weary and aching and hurt; he'd taken away something that Dean needed to live, swapped it for something he would gladly have been rid of, breaking Dean's hellish bargain by making another that hurt Dean just the same. "I didn't know what else to do, Bobby," he pleads.

"Dean _asked_ you not to do anything," Bobby says, implacable. "The minute I suspected you were attempting a spell that dangerous, I tried to stop you. You _drugged_ us, Sam! And don't tell me there wasn't another way!"

"Was - was there?" He holds his breath even though what he really wants is to plug his ears.

"I'd been doing research too. I'd found something that would've put Dean out of that demon bitch's way long enough to invalidate the contract."

"No." The denial is instinctive.

"Yes."

"Bobby -" Sam says, begging for mercy. "Please help me get him back. I'll figure out something to make things right, I swear, but I need him back first."

There is only a long silence on the other end. Then he hears Bobby ask, "Sammy, you okay?"

He can't choke back his sob in time. "Come on now, son," Bobby says. "You ain't in no condition to be taking on any fae like that."

"I need him," he says. "And I've been doing the best I can with what I've got. All I know is that we're going after the fae at Midsummer, and that Dean's in some kind of deep sleep or hibernation or something and he's not hurt or being hurt."

"Who's we?"

"This guy Rob, some kind of expert on fae; Jo said he was the one to talk to."

"Never heard of him. But I've been reading up too. Went through all my books again, started translating them myself in case the English versions missed anything."

"And?"

"Nothing yet, but I got a stack taller'n you still to get through."

"Bobby, thank -"

"That boy is like my own," Bobby interrupts before hanging up the phone, and Sam recognizes the love and justice wrapped up in that one little statement and smiles again as he clicks his phone shut.

*

He cuts Jo's hair, at her request, while she sits in a chair near the meager row of three-quarter-sized appliances that pass for a kitchen; New York apartments were apparently designed by the same people who'd fashioned tins for sardines. Her hair is light like fluff, silky when he catches hold of a strand and rubs it between his fingers. 

"I'm not tender-headed, Sam," she laughs when he draws the comb carefully and gently through her locks. "You think my mom went this soft on me?" And no, he can't imagine that Ellen would have; it's hard to picture Ellen with a little curly-haired girl. "Five quick swipes with the brush, bristles digging into my head, and a smack on the bottom with the back if she thought I'd been fidgety," Jo says matter-of-factly.

She sounds happier than she has in a long time, even before he invaded her life and set up camp on her couch. Maybe this is what she sounded like when she was talking to Sean and he could answer her with words and touches; maybe this is how she sounded before she had to burn his body.

Memory might be sweet, but he's not Ellen, bustling about with a million things to do; he's got nothing but time, and he can certainly lavish some of it on her. So he keeps going with the wet tortoiseshell comb, watching the gold in it and the gold of her damp hair wink at him with each careful pass. "This is how she did it on days we'd all get dressed up and go somewhere," she says, reminiscing, and he squeezes her shoulder before dropping the comb on the kitchen table and reaching for the scissors.

"Tell me something?"

"Hmmm?" Her eyes are closed now like she wanted to give herself over to the pleasure of the comb running through her hair and scraping gently across her scalp; he can see the dark spikes of her eyelashes down against her cheeks.

"What makes Rob an expert on fae?" He doesn't quite want to broach the subject of her anger when he'd first mentioned what had snatched Dean, but that question's there too, if she chooses to pick it up. He cuts one curl free.

She shifts her weight a bit, trying to get comfortable with staying in the same position for so long, but there's not enough padding on her or the chair to make that really feasible. The newspaper on the floor crinkles with her movements. "Sean told me that Rob's mom used to tell them both stories about the fae, long, detailed stories about their beauty and their danger and the glamour, all of that. He could never remember any of them to tell me, but he'd always talk about that time with a smile on his face. I don't think he ever got over her death."

He turns her head to a different angle, trying to catch the best of the light, and starts snipping at the ends of her hair again.

Her eyes are still closed. "Rob listened to those stories too, only he pretty much memorized them. He told me a couple once. I don't remember them now, but I heard enough to jibe with the lore that was out there. Those stories were true." 

"So, what?" Sam asks, carefully combing the strands out again; they keep stubbornly curling back up. "You think Rob's mom was a hunter?" He's never heard of a hunter with the last name Robson or Kelly, but then again, most hunters stick to what they know and kill, like Gordon, like Elkins; the Winchesters got dismissed as jacks-of-all-trades until people took a closer look at their track record.

"Could be," Jo says. "Maybe it was her, maybe it was her husband, maybe her parents. I never got to meet her." She shakes her hand, where a piece of hair has landed. "I know for a fact that _he_ didn't get over her death either." She pauses, hesitates a little before saying, "He's been really good to me, Sam."

"I know," he says, surprising himself. He's never seen her go all . . . cloudy and dazed, helpless and boneless around the guy; Jo might be made of sterner stuff than he is. 

Rob comes through the door before Sam can say any more, a wide and genuine smile forming on his face when he sees what they're up to.

"Well?" Jo asks; she'd refused to do this in front of her bedroom mirror.

Rob cups her chin with kind fingers and turns her head this way and that. "You look beautiful, Joanna," Rob says, completely straightforward, and Jo beams up at him and leans back to let Sam finish the job.

*

Rob's been snappish all day, a far cry from his usual cooler-than-thou demeanor, and Sam desperately, angrily wishes that Rob would just touch him and set his mind free. But Rob's keeping his hands to himself, and Sam can't take another minute of this pissiness.

He pretty much lunges forward, achieving direct contact at last, and startles back immediately. Rob's skin is hot; usually he's warm - Sam can't pinpoint much in his memories, but he does remember, vaguely, dopily, that lulling warm lassitude that Rob's touch brings to his mind and body - but now he's running a few degrees even above that. He wonders if Rob is sick, if all of his irritability is a sign of shame that his body can succumb like anyone else's, but Rob looks just the same. Better than ever, actually, his eyes glittering and so blue it almost hurts to look at them, and his pale, perfect face set off by black hair tousled by Sam's embrace. Rob's not looking flushed or hectic, just keyed up and anxious, and Sam gets a glimpse of Rob's big, square, silver watch and realizes what day it is. The vernal equinox is here, and Rob's wondering whether he made the right call.

The realization that saving Dean is this important to Rob, enough for him to get this worked up, takes Sam by surprise but doesn't budge him an inch off his chosen course. He opens the window, letting the first day of spring's chilly air in, and presses forward to lose himself in Rob's hot, smooth skin. Rob responds, finally, but Sam comes without that sweet haze dimming his emotions; he's fucked out and blissed out and sore but the world stays sharp around him.

*

"We're going to do this spaghetti method, 'cause all I've got is a bunch of little fragments that don't add up to much," Bobby says, voice sliding in and out as the phone he must have balanced on his shoulder gets jostled around while he picks up one set of notes after another.

Bobby was right about loving Dean, if he's hung on to that pet phrase. Sam can remember the day the joke was born. 

They'd been at Bobby's on a hot summer afternoon, trying to figure out what could have sucked the intestines out of three white businessmen over in Charles Mix County. Dean had been pushing for some kind of creature living in Lake Andes, and Bobby had gone so far as to allow that there was always that possibility, while Sam, irritable from the heat and the way his hair curled uncomfortably high in it, had scoffed and pointed out that there had been not a drop of water anywhere near the bodies. 

"This's the spaghetti method, Sammy," Dean had said, smiling broadly, conspiratorially, at Bobby, who'd taken a huge package of ground chuck out of the fridge and tossed it on the counter. "Throw it all against the wall and see what sticks." 

"Quit grinnin' at me like you're waitin' for me to drop my panties," Bobby had said, clearly waiting for Dean to get his lazy ass up from the kitchen table and start helping out with making hamburger patties. Sam had kept shuffling the papers in front of him, sure the solution was in there somewhere.

He had looked up to see that Dean couldn't decide whether to respond by laughing or making a face and so ended up choking on his ice water, and Bobby had clapped a hand to Dean's back as if to smack the choke right out of him, but ended up rubbing warm, paternal circles over Dean's shoulder blade. "You idjit," Bobby said. "You know anyone who makes spaghetti that way, you kick 'em out of your goddamned house."

Sam thinks he can feel Bobby's hand against his spine, comforting and somehow permanent, before remembering that it was Dean's back, not his; that sense-memory must live in another bit of Dean's soul that got swapped over permanently to him. 

"I'm listening, Bobby," he says; "hit me."

"Okay, in _The Book of Green_ we got a fae band that lost its queen. Followed the footnotes from there to find a group of satyrs that organized themselves like fae in the _Index_. I found a legend of a migrant band of fae. And another about fae that've teamed up with tricksters, as if either of 'em needed any more mojo. And there was an apocryphal tale in the first appendix of Bower's last book about fae scouring the world for their rightful king." 

In another lifetime, Sam thinks, Bobby could have been a strict but beloved professor, sporting a grizzled beard and neatly slicked hair, translating texts and hunting down nothing more dangerous than footnotes. And in another lifetime, another world, Dean would dote on his wife and be ruled by the iron fists of the little sons and daughters he loved like he couldn't get enough of them.

He has to get Dean back, even if that means bringing him into a world that's caused him nothing but grief; he needs his brother desperately.

*

"I'm wanted by the FBI," Sam points out, as rationally as he can. "I'm not about to walk into an airport and hand myself over on a silver platter."

He waits for Rob's leer, but it doesn't come; Rob's frowning like a wrench has been thrown into his plans. "You want to drive to South Dakota?" There's a strong hint of _that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard_ in his tone.

"Done it before. Lots of times," Sam shrugs. "It's easier to slip by unnoticed on the ground."

Rob's hand shoots out to circle his wrist, pale, elastic handcuffs. "We'd be wasting time."

"We can make it in less than a week," Sam says definitively. "And this way we can carry all sorts of stuff we wouldn't be able to get through airport security. Trust me."

Rob looks up at him through his eyelashes, straight, dark bristles, with an odd smile on his face. "There's not a lot of 'stuff' we'll need for this; it's down to you and me, Saintly, not weapons." His smile grows broader, Cheshire Cat-like. "Trust me."

*

Rob clearly wasn't expecting him, but Sam just waits patiently on the doorstep until Rob blows out an ill-tempered breath and lets him in. The place is palatial, one of the old New York brownstones that was built to last. There are wide windows framed in thick velvet curtains, the panes polished clear and sparkling. Everywhere he looks, something is twinkling brightly, the furniture and the art on the wall all gleaming and coordinated in shades of gilt and green.

"I'm ready, man," Sam says before Rob can ask. "All packed" - he hoists his duffel bag up to eye level - "and ready to go." He takes another long look around, deliberately avoiding Rob's impatient eye. "Looks like you're not, though, so just steer me to the books and I'll stay out of your way while you pack."

He feels better than he has in months; he hasn't taken a first, proactive step in rescuing Dean in so long, and when he woke up and realized he could familiarize himself with the texts Rob was using, his stomach had settled and he'd been able to breathe again. 

"Out," Rob snaps.

"No," Sam says stubbornly. "We need to get going today, and I know I owe you, but I'm not going to let you fuck this up either." He's toe-to-toe with Rob, glaring up at him.

Rob smiles all of a sudden, that familiar smirk settling back into place as he slides a warm hand around Sam's neck and bends his head to kiss him thoroughly. Sam cannot keep his arms from coming up to hold Rob closer.

"Most of the books are already packed away, Saintly," Rob says, strong teeth near Sam's ear, Sam's cheek. "But sit tight and I'll bring you something."

Sam goes obediently to the green velvet settee he'd dumped his duffel next to and sits; the piece is firm despite the plushness of the cushions, and he sits up straight. On the opposite wall is a framed piece of thick, heavy paper, metallic ink glittering under glass. He gets closer and finds it's a family tree, an unusual one, with only female names in the unbroken chain of branches until there, at the very bottom, are _Mary_ leading to _Sean_ and _Moira_ to _Rex_. 

"Very House of Black," he says when Rob comes back into the room with a big cloth-covered book in one hand. " _Harry Potter_ ," he clarifies when Rob makes no comment. Rob just steers him back to the couch and Sam takes the suggestion and opens the book.

There's not a lot of new information there, but it's good to have things so clearly laid out, and he goes through the material carefully, trying to commit as much to memory as possible. If Rob said there wasn't room for this in the car, or that it's not one of the crucial texts they'll need, then that's good enough for him.

His stomach growls and he holds his place in the text with a finger and checks his watch. It's been hours since he showed up unannounced, and he's starving. 

"Rob?" he calls, getting no answer. 

He makes his way down a bright hall, glancing into each room he walks by; the place is empty. He turns to head back to the living room and sees a large framed photograph on a small table in the corner of the hallway, just near the open doorway back to the main space. It takes him a minute to realize that it's not Rob staring out at him with those challenging blue eyes; it's Rob's mother, who passed those eyes and that face down to her son intact, as if there was no second person involved in Rob's conception. Next to her is a woman with lighter hair and china-blue eyes holding a small, round blond boy against her hip. Rob is seated on his mother's lap, upright like it's a throne, his face already much more defined and stripped of baby fat than his cousin's, defiant gaze mimicking his mother's.

He hears the front door open and goes back to the living room to see Rob, who says, "Let's get going, then, Saintly." Sam scoops up his duffel and the open book and sees an envelope addressed to "Joanna" on the table by the front door; he leads the way out and Rob locks up behind them.

Sitting out front is a big, shiny SUV the color of sand with tinted black windows. "Hop in," Rob says. "Maps are in the glove compartment. You're navigating."

*

The car is tricked out with all the bells and whistles, so conspicuous that Sam's tense until they get out of New York City, only then reasoning that Henrickson has no clue that he's not with Dean or in the Impala. And Rob isn't anyone the FBI would be looking for. Right here, in the buttery-soft beige leather passenger seat, sitting high above the traffic, is the safest place he could be.

Rob doesn't drive like Dean; there's no easy slouch with one arm out the window, no fond pats to the steering wheel, and no domination of the stereo. Rob's got the A/C on low and some radio station on, the volume too low to make out much. Sam looks sideways at him and sticks one of the maps from the glove compartment into the back of the book; he keeps reading, trying to take advantage of the silence.

*

"Pull in here," Rob says out of the blue.

"I'm not tired," Sam assures him. "I've only been driving for a couple -"

"I'm stopping for the night, and that means you are too." There's no room for disagreement in Rob's tone.

"Here, though?" The place is way nicer than his usual digs; there's a valet coming for their keys already. "We can't - I mean, I can't -"

"Saintly," Rob says, meaning _shut up_. "Can't take it with you, can you?" If that's code for anything, Sam doesn't get it. Still, he can't let Rob assume the expenses of a trip that's to save Dean; he needs to pay his way.

"Unless you're rolling in it -" he starts before Rob interrupts him yet again.

"I am." Rob gets out and heads for the shining glass doors and thickly carpeted lobby, and Sam scrambles to get his book and his bag and follow.

He reaches the front desk in time to see that the credit card Rob slides across the cool marble counter has his real name on it, and the man in the discreet dark-blue uniform smiles after he swipes it through. "Thank you, sir. Room 2448. If you'll follow the bellhop to the elevator."

The room is large, the bedspread and the curtains beige shading into gold. The bed itself is enormous, bigger than a king, and heaped up with pillows. Five minutes after Rob's tipped the bellhop for bringing up his luggage, Sam's face is buried in one of the pillows, soft and cool, his ass is in the air, and Rob's heavy hand is inching down his bare back.

The bed is too plush for Sam to have any stability at all on his hands and knees; he just keeps sinking into the dense softness like it's quicksand. Rob lays Sam out flat with a pillow under his hips and drapes himself on top of Sam like a blanket. The air conditioning prickles pleasantly against Sam's warm skin, and by the time he comes back to himself and hears the shower running, he's covered in marks from an insistent mouth.

*

"Why would the fae take Dean?" Sam asks, finishing another chapter. Rob looks in the rearview mirrors and switches lanes.

He doesn't realize he even said it out loud until Rob answers him. "Fae take what they like. They like beauty."

No surprise there; Dean's always been the one with the outrageous good looks. But he's had those all his life - at least, once he grew into his too-pretty features and bulked up a little. If it was just a matter of getting Dean alone, why hadn't they taken him when Dad had taken off and Sam was at Stanford?

"Surprised, though, that they didn't wait for you, Saintly," Rob says with a possessive smile. "That pretty face and those visions dancing around in your head. Fae like power even more than beauty." 

Sam tries to smile back around the lump in his throat and the knot in his gut. He made Dean the perfect prey with his soul-switcheroo; the visions he sloughed off onto Dean only made his brother even more attractive to the things he was hunting. Even if he spends the rest of their lives apologizing, he can't make up for what he did to Dean. 

"Pull over," he says sharply. "I need to drive."

Once he's behind the wheel, he asks, "So why did Missouri only see him sleeping? What are they doing with him, with the people they take?"

"They'll keep him until Midsummer," Rob answers, looking pointedly out the window. "The stolen are a big part of the ceremony. That's when they'll decide whether to make him one of their own forever or kill him."

No. Not even the fae could fail to see Dean's worth and choose to discard him like trash. Sam refuses to entertain the notion for a single moment; he concentrates on the real threat, that the fae will adore Dean so much that they'll want to keep him with them for all time. He pushes down the thought that at least that way Dean would be safe - from hunting, from Henrickson, from him - he needs to believe that Dean is still Dean enough to never choose anything but Sam.

*

They've hit Illinois and are making good time when Sam looks out the window to see flat, dry land and weathered buildings on which the paint has faded until they blend right in with the dust. "How are you going to find the fae?" He'd called Bobby again, pushed for any information that would give him a reasonable starting point, but Bobby had said that his dogs hadn't even been able to find a trace of Dean after about three miles northwest of Bobby's property. And the site where they'd stopped, whimpering and pawing at the ground, didn't so much as set off a click from the EMF meter or flare up at a little salt, iron, or holy water. "Do you have a self-bored stone?"

Rob glances at him speculatively, with eyes that look like the only water around for days. "Never did find one of those," he says thoughtfully. "That's why the timing of this has to be just right. Come on, Saintly, you read the book. Midsummer Eve -" he prompts.

"- under the full moon, even a mortal can see the fae reveling," Sam finishes with him. "But how do you know where to look at all? 'Three miles northwest' is pretty vague, and that's a lot of area to cover. Plus we don't know if they're even in the same place." 

He needs to know the plan; Dean only wouldn't share the details of a plan when he knew he was taking on too much of the danger and Sam would pitch a fit. He doesn't think he's got another martyr on his hands, but Rob's dedication to this case has never made much sense to him; it's certainly not due to any loving devotion to him.

"These fae are constantly on the move, you're right. No one's ever been able to pin them down before." Rob pulls his sunglasses out of his pocket and slips them on.

"So how are we going to do it?"

"I've got a plan," Rob says dismissively.

"And I've got a right to hear it." 

"Ooh, Saintly, look at you with your backbone firmly in place," Rob says, tone neither pleasant nor unfriendly. "The plan is you."

Instinctively, Sam shrinks back into his seat. "Me?" His heart starts racing. This is the most important case he's ever been on, and the most nebulous, and Rob needs to have a better idea than that. "I couldn't even get out of the apartment to do any research, I've got no idea what kind of fae we're after, I don't know how to convince them to let Dean go -" The words are spilling out of him, panicked and sharp and high.

Rob's hand, tight on his jaw, is the only thing that stops him. Rob shakes, none too gently, and Sam's head feels like it's been set on a spring like a jack-in-the-box instead of a neck. "But you know your brother," Rob says firmly. "I'm not tracking the fae; I'm tracking Dean, with you as my self-bored stone."

_Oh_ , he wants to say, _that would make sense, except I'm not the one with a hole in me. That'd be Dean - I'm actually overflowing with what I took from him._ Instead he clicks his jaw, nods, and keeps quiet. Rob's fingers stroke through the ends of his hair and across the back of his neck.

*

His blood starts buzzing one day and won't stop, no matter how long he lies in the oversized tub. Rob's hands only make it louder, but the vibrations feel too good to stop, and Rob draws back, uncertain for the first time, but Sam latches on to him, won't unlock his arms and legs, keeps them cinched tightly together. All he can think about is Dean and his Magic Fingers obsession, and then it hits him, this feeling is because he's close; Dean is almost in his grasp, and he laughs, wild and free, even when Rob's mouth covers his.

There is nothing to stop him from pressing Rob down into the big soft bed, nothing to keep him from swallowing down Rob's dick, nothing that won't let him crawl up Rob's big, hard-muscled body to sink down at last on his spit-slick cock and watch Rob's eyes go from electric to fiery. Every touch just gets his blood humming more insistently, and that in the distance is the sound of the victory drums. He knows, deep down, that they're going to win. And then Rob pumps his hips and Sam just can't think anymore.

*

The moon rises full and luxurious overhead, spilling light down almost wantonly, wasteful and reckless. Sam just follows the tug in his gut, Rob moving next to him, both of them stepping silently through the tall grass of this untended meadow.

Somewhere between one breath and the next, he sees Dean. And then he's running, flat out, like he's aiming for a four-minute mile, and his blood is singing, but Dean doesn't get any closer. Rob's hand closing around his arm brings him up short. Suddenly Sam can see the fae ringed around his brother's bier, every detail extraordinarily sharp. The flowers heaped up on Dean's recumbent form are as varied and vivid as Missouri had prophesied, but the fae's faces are far from friendly. Some of them, he sees, are carrying spears or bows and arrows, and their beauty is terrible, a weapon all its own; he has to slit his eyes to be able to look at them for more than a moment.

They ring protectively around Dean, and before the circle closes, Sam can see that Dean looks like he's merely asleep, just resting for a few hours. Most of the lines on his face have smoothed themselves out, and there's no loss of muscle mass, no diminution that tells the truth about the many months he's lain there. Sam dares a look at Rob, who's watching Dean with a hungry gaze, drinking in Dean's beauty.

Rob propels them both forward, and the music that's been winding its way through the air and into Sam stops, the dead silence shocking him, making him think for a moment that Dean's somehow been killed. 

Rob's hand is trembling, damp with sweat, but his voice rings out, clear and carrying. "Midsummer Eve, many full moons ago, you lost your queen. You have been seeking her heir, the king from the prophecy you all know in your hearts." He drops Sam's arm and steps forward, the moonlight hitting him like a spotlight, washing out his pale skin and making his eyes glitter; Sam cannot get his feet to move him closer to either Rob or Dean - they're cemented to the ground. "I am the lost king. Her blood runs in my veins. I am Rex."

Instantaneously, every single electric-blue gaze is focused on Rob's face, and Sam finds himself able to move once more. The sound of voices - questioning, demanding, staking claims - floats over his head; he leaves it behind and rushes over to his brother's side.

"Dean," he whispers, reaching out to touch that still face, that loose hand lying by his side.

He doesn't know how long he stands there, but it's not long enough to take in every detail of Dean's physical being, the dense softness of his hair, the patterns of his freckles scattered across his cheeks and nose, the slow and steady throb of his pulse in his throat. A cheer goes up behind him and Dean's eyes - soft and lambent - open and focus, after one long heart-stopping moment, on him. 

"Sammy," Dean says, voice rasping and trying to find a smile.

Sam holds out his shaking hands and Dean, reaching for him, vanishes.

*

"What did you do?" Sam screams.

He's not sure who he is yelling at, but it's Rob who steps forward. "Dean was taken because they believed he might be the lost king. Now that I've been acknowledged as the rightful king, they've let him go."

His brain is just not working. "Let him go? Killed him?" His fists are raised, itching for weapons.

"No." Rob's voice stops him mid-stride. "Let him go, put him back where they found him, no different than when they took him."

It takes some time to process that, but when he finally does, he's sure of something else. "You used me. You've been trying to find these fae ever since your mother told you that you were the lost king, and you let me believe you were trying to help me find Dean."

Rob's wearing that familiar, unsettling smile, but his eyes - and the eyes of all his clan - are focused and cold. "Didn't I help you find your brother, Saintly? Safe and sound, not a scratch on him? And when they realized he wasn't the one, wasn't he set free to go?"

He can't bring himself to admit it, any of it. But he can't walk away either - something is binding him to the ground again. "It's you that we're puzzling over now," Rob says, and Sam's blood runs cold. He can't be kept apart from Dean one minute longer, or the last vestiges of his sanity will slip away. "What are we to do with you?"

Rob comes close, tips Sam's chin up with his warm fingers, and brushes the hair out of Sam's eyes. "Such a pretty boy," Rob murmurs, kissing him deep, and Sam can't fight it.

Rob breaks away and Sam gasps for breath; Rob just smiles and slides a hand into Sam's hair. "Any time one of my band requires a favor, you will do all that is in your power to grant it." He grins, a flash of white teeth in the dark night. "I'll be seeing you," he whispers, and seals the deal with another kiss.

When Sam opens his eyes, Rob and the rest of the fae are gone. It takes a moment for his legs to start moving, and he tries to remember where Rob left the SUV. He finds it in about ten minutes, and remembers Rob making a show of putting the keys in the glove compartment. He fishes them out, starts the engine, and turns on the headlights, scouring the landscape for Dean.

*

Dean's asleep in the passenger seat when Sam knocks on Bobby's door. The Impala is gleaming in the moonlight, sitting next to Bobby's truck in the driveway, safely away from the scrappers that litter the yard. Bobby says not a word when Sam points to Dean, just squints to see him through the windshield and makes no excuses for the water welling in his eyes.

Sam carries his brother upstairs and puts him to bed. There are two chairs in the room, and Sam drags them both over so that he and Bobby can sit side-by-side and keep vigil.

*

Sam wakes up to the smell of coffee and bacon and sits up with a start when he realizes the bed is empty. He runs down the stairs, taking them four at a time, and bursts into the kitchen. Dean and Bobby are sitting there, all four elbows on the table, nursing enormous mugs of coffee. 

"Dean," Sam breathes, then chokes on the torrent of words he feels coming up.

"Morning, Sammy," Dean says quietly.

"I don't - I'm sorry - what do you -" Sam stutters, and Dean's face softens.

Dean gets up and with steady hands gentles Sam into a chair. "Sam. You saved me. From the crossroads demon and from the fae. So quit saying you're sorry."

"But I took away what you need to hunt," Sam says, focusing on Dean's face, full of forgiveness, instead of Bobby's.

"No." The denial is unmistakable.

"No?" He can hardly dare to believe. He darts a glance at Bobby, who's shaking his head like he knows exactly what Dean's up to, and his heart sinks.

"Look, Sam, this was always about saving people. Even more than hunting things. And I can still do that."

"But you could - you could settle down, live a normal life." Even as he says it, he knows it's not true. Dean might possibly have chosen to settle down, but he won't be forced into it because the skills, reflexes, and instincts he spent a lifetime honing have been stripped away from him.

"I can still save people, Sammy," Dean repeats quietly, and Sam subsides.

*

So, Sam thinks, the fratboys they saved from the vengeful spirit that haunted their basement were right; this bar is the perfect place to unwind: cheap beer that tastes like the good stuff, pretty girls who could shoot pool, and a bartender whose eye could be easily caught.

Dean's talking to one girl in particular, a girl with long black hair and little black glasses and big black boots, so Sam heads over to get the next round. 

"Hey," he says, and the bartender looks over, nods, and starts to mosey over.

Sam looks over at Dean, laughing and bending a little to get his ear closer to the girl's pretty mouth, and figures he should buy the girl a drink too, just for putting that smile on his brother's face. Since he woke up, Dean's confined himself to doing all of the research and digging the graves; his smiles were different back when he was the one with the gun. 

"Let me get three beers, please," Sam says, pulling the cash from his pocket and setting it down.

This time, when he looks up, he notices that the bartender's eyes are a familiar, unmistakable shade of electric blue. The bill he's laid on the bar gets swapped for a note on stiff, pale paper. _You are very good at this, indeed. Doesn't matter how that came to be, does it, Saintly? What matters is that you remember what you owe me. Your first job starts tonight._ He crumples the note in his fist and the bartender smiles pityingly at him.

He thinks he can hear Rob's laughter.


End file.
